tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40049963081595147462024-03-13T04:33:34.578-07:00The How Not To Blog: Archived Non-fiction, Published & Not<p align="left"><a href="http://prometheusstudies.blogspot.com">Prometheus Studies</a> <a href="http://thehownotto.blogspot.com/search/label/history">History</a>
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<p align="right">Muses of a girl with a trunk full of stories...</p>
<p align="right">showing you how not to blog.</p>Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.comBlogger95125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-70710919120182830032014-09-18T11:48:00.000-07:002014-09-18T11:48:25.215-07:00SO MUCH ABOUT SHARKS: Cool kinds, anatomy, YOU, and the dogfish shark<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>I wrote this a long, LONG time ago, and my writing style's become considerably less stiff since then, but sharks are still super-cool, and I wanted to share some of this coolness with you! You can skip to your favorite section if you want (weird kinds of sharks, shark anatomy, shark lifestyle, etc etc)--just scroll down looking for the big words.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.27cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">INTRO</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">All sharks are in the kingdom animalia, phylum chordata,
and class chondrichthyes, along with chimaeras, rays, and skates.
They are classified in subclass Elasmobranchii with skates and rays.
The most famous shark is undoubtedly the Great White, popularized by
horror movies, but there are over 370 different species of shark of
all shapes and sizes, ranging from a small member of the genus
Squaliolus (males—6” approx., females—8” approx.) to the
massive whale shark (<i>Rhincodon typus</i>)
measuring 40 ft. or more. The number of shark species is relatively
small, though, compared to the 2,800 different kinds of bony fish.
Nevertheless, the shark is a very diverse creature. We would like to
give you a brief overview on a few species before going into the
general characteristics of all sharks.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote1sym" name="sdendnote1anc"><sup>i</sup></a></sup>
<sup><sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote2sym" name="sdendnote2anc">ii</a></sup></sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">NEAT KINDS OF SHARKS</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The small smooth dogfish shark (<i>Mustelus
canis</i>) averages 3 to 4 ft. in length and is
one of the most abundant sharks on the east coast, found in great
numbers in the Delaware Bay—more are caught here than all other
sharks combined. They leave the area in mid-October, although some
are still here by early November and don’t return north until the
water rises above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. These common sharks have
low, crushing, flat teeth—and a lot of ‘em—and feed mostly on
crustaceans like lobsters, crabs, and clams, as well as small fish. <sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote3sym" name="sdendnote3anc"><sup>iii</sup></a></sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One very interesting shark is the Megamouth shark,
(<i>Megachasma pelagios</i>,
meaning big cave of the sea) considered by some scientists to be one
of the oldest and most primitive species within the order
Lamniformes. A whole new genus had to be created when it was found.
It looks more like a small whale than a shark, with a flabby body,
long pectoral fins, and very short dorsal fins, and is thought to
have poor mobility and to be less active than whale sharks or basking
sharks. Very little is known about this shark; it has only been
sighted 27 times. It habits waters all over the world, although the
most sightings were seen in the Pacific, and seems to spend daytime
in deep waters and night in mid water depths. Its body tapers
posteriorly and its head looks big. It’s pretty much white on the
bottom and brown on the dorsal surface, darker towards the head, with
a whitish band on the snout. It has fifty rows of teeth, females
seeming to use fewer rows than males. The largest was 17 ft—males
mature by 13 ft and females by 16 ft. It filter-feeds mainly on
krill, shrimps, and other such organisms and is fed upon mostly by
sperm whales. <sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote4sym" name="sdendnote4anc"><sup>iv</sup></a></sup>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Another unusual shark is the cookie-cutter shark
<i>(Isistius braselienus)</i>,
which is a very small fish that preys upon slow larger fish. It is
very aggressive and has been known to take bites out of submarines,
taking them for large whales. The cookie-cutter sharks live around
larger creatures and take bites out of them as they go along. They
frequent deeper waters during the day and mid-waters during the
night, making the Megamouth shark easy prey for them.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote5sym" name="sdendnote5anc" sdfixed=""><sup>i</sup></a>v</sup></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Megatooth shark is also of interest, and it is the
largest fossil shark known to man, estimated to have reached at least
40 feet and 20 tons, like a very carnivorous whale shark.
<i>Carcharodon megalodon</i>
is thought to have fed on large fishes and mammals and seems to be
the closest “relative” to the Great White shark. Unfortunately,
sharks, lacking bones, don’t preserve well and this fossil is known
only by its teeth and jaws—but these are REALLY huge, kind of like
a REALLY GREAT WHITE. <sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote6sym" name="sdendnote6anc" sdfixed=""><sup>i</sup></a>
iv</sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Unfortunately we are not writing a book but only a
report, and cannot describe the basking shark, the Caribbean shark,
the Galapagos shark, the Tiger shark, the Lemon shark, the Nurse
shark, the Sand shark, the Sandbar shark, the black tip shark and
many others. We hope you have a very slight appreciation for the
diversity of subclass Elasmobranchii. Before we move on, though, we
HAVE to mention the Great White.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To put it bluntly, <i>Cacharodon
cacharias </i>is dumb and antisocial. It does
not tell its prey by shape, size or color but by taste, and will
attack pretty much anything that splashes on the surface. It feeds
primarily on aquatic mammals and occasionally a marine reptile, as
well as large fish. It never eats sea otters or aquatic
birds—perhaps, like people, they taste awful. It appears to prefer
high-energy, fatty foods, kind of like how Americans prefer high-carb
McDonald’s meals. For example, the Great White will strip the
blubber off of a whale, but not the muscle underneath. The White’s
skin is less rough and sand-papery than most other sharks, and is
rather smooth. The Great White roams waters all over the world, is
most viewable in the wintertime, and hates other Great Whites. If
two whites come upon each other from opposite direction, they will
both turn and leave. Often when one White wants another to clear
out, it will slap the water with its caudal fin, roll over in the
water, or leap up and smack itself against the water. These splashings are then detected through the "lateral lines" (specialized organs) of the other shark.
The Great White attacks prey in many different ways, sometimes
charging it horizontally across the surface, sometimes attacking from
below, and sometimes charging it directly vertically with such a
force that it leaps out of the water like a dolphin.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote7sym" name="sdendnote7anc" sdfixed=""><sup>v</sup></a>
iv</sup>
</span></div>
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<sup><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></sup></div>
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<sup><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">COOL SHARK ANATOMY</span></sup></div>
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<sup><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></sup></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite all this variety, all sharks follow a uniform
definition, having one general body pattern and many similarities in
lifestyles. We will begin with the shark’s body plan and then move
to discussing lifestyles before talking a little on the other members
of the class chondrichthyes.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The shark’s skeleton is similar to other fish, but
made of cartilage instead of bone. This cartilage is usually
hardened by mineral deposits, especially around the vertebrae and the
skull, but it does not do well outside of water. The cartilage is
lighter than bone, which increases buoyancy. The skeleton is made up
of two main areas—the axial skeleton and the appendicular skeleton.
The axial skeleton is the vertebrae (backbone), cranium (skull), and
rib cage. There can be two regions of the skull, or
chondrocranium—the neurocranium and the splanchnocranium. The
neurocranium is the dorsal, or top part of the skull, that has to do
with protecting the brain and sensory organs. The splanchnocranium
is the ventral, or underneath part of the skull, concerned with
forming the jaw and the gill arches. The powerful jaws, of course,
contain the numerous teeth, which are attached by ligaments to the
jaw, and upon falling out, are replaced by teeth that were developing
all along behind layers of skin. The neurocranium has lots of little
foramina, or perforations in it, for such things as a primitive
“third eye”, protection for the lateral lines, openings from
sensory organs into the cranium, and other stuff. It also has the
rostrum, or snout, of the shark. The splanchnocranium has the
mandibular arch, which is the jaws, as well as other support for the
sides of the shark’s comparatively massive head. The axial
skeleton also includes the long vertebrae down to the shark’s tail,
which contains the notochord, the spinal cord, the caudal artery, and
the caudal vein. The appendicular skeleton contains the assorted
fins—dorsal, caudal, pelvic, and pectoral—as well as the pectoral
and pelvic girdles. Attached to the pectoral girdle, which is like a
big belt around the middle of the shark, are the two wing-like
pectoral fins, and attached to the pelvic girdle, a smaller belt
nearer the tail of the shark, are the pelvic fins. Each set of fins
is attached to its girdle and supported by a notochord. The shark’s
skeleton is complicated, but simpler than that of say, a human. <sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote8sym" name="sdendnote8anc" sdfixed=""><sup>v</sup></a>i</sup>
<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote9sym" name="sdendnote9anc" sdfixed=""><sup>i</sup></a></sup></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sharks’ fins differ according to species, and are very
different from bony fish fins. Sharks that don’t dwell exclusively
on the bottom have much stiffer pectoral fins than those that do.
Shark fins are generally inflexible, unlike the fins of bony fishes.
The shark uses its tail as the main method of movement, with the fins
providing lift and buoyancy, kind of like airplane wings. The
hammerhead shark doesn’t have very large pectoral fins, for
example, because its weird head provides some lift for it. Dorsal
fins aren’t just for decoration, either. They aid in steering
efficiency and may help block water flow to the tail, increasing the
result of the thrust from the tail and preserving energy. Bottom
dwelling sharks have smaller dorsal fins that top dwelling sharks,
because they don’t need to move as quickly. The downward sweep of
the asymmetrical caudal fin, with its large dorsal lobe and small
ventral lobe, also helps with lift.
</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite the light skeleton, a shark is negatively
buoyant—it sinks. The shark also lacks a swim bladder, which other
fish have. Although a shark must be often in motion, it isn’t true
that it must be continuously in motion to stay afloat. The shark
contains a liver with very light oil to help it stay afloat.
Pelagic, or open-ocean sharks, which need to stay afloat more than
bottom dwelling sharks, contain larger livers with lighter oils.
This makes an effective buoyancy system.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The shark breathes by exchanging gases through its
gills. The water taken in through its mouth passes over the gill
filaments, where gas exchange takes place. The carbon dioxide is
released from the blood at the gill lamellae and exits via the gill
slits with the water. Sharks have between five and seven gill arches
just in front of the pectoral fins. They slits are never entirely
below the pectoral fins. Some sharks must swim continually to ensure
that they get the oxygen they need past the filaments, but others
have a special pharynx in their throats that pumps the water past the
gill filaments. There is no protective covering over the gill slits,
unlike with bony fish, so they are more vulnerable to injury. Many
sharks, especially bottom dwelling species, also have spiracles on
the dorsal side of their skulls that are kind of like extra gills, so
they can ventilate while feeding slowly on the bottom. These
spiracles have a special valve to keep things flowing.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sharks’ guts are as interesting as any—if you’re
into lots of greasy yellow stuff. There’s a really cool fat
esophagus, which is really large considering the size of the shark,
since the food is normally swallowed in big, whole pieces. The
stomach can expand considerably, and follows the esophagus
immediately in a caudal directed J-shape. Following the stomach,
which is lined with white lobey things on the inside called rugae, is
a duodenum, connected to the gall bladder and the intestines, where
the bile breaks down the shark’s food. Following the duodenum is
the valvular intestine, or the rest of the small intestine, which
contains spiral valves to increase the surface area and absorption of
the intestines. The colon is the continuation of this intestine.
The rectal gland leads into the colon by means of a duct. It
excretes salt to regulate the shark’s body fluids. Normally, the
concentration of salt in the shark is lower than that in the sea, so
it is in danger of dehydrating through osmosis. The salt excreted by
the rectal gland increases the concentration of salt in the shark, in
a sense decreasing the concentration of water, so that the
concentration inside the shark is the same as outside, preventing any
osmosis from occurring. This is called an osmoregulator. The shark
has one final end to the digestive tract—the cloaca, meaning sewer.
Higher organisms such as humans have different organs for the
rectum, the reproductive system, and the urinary bladder, but the
shark just uses the cloaca for all three.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The shark’s liver is also really cool—and REALLY
HUGE!!! (In some it takes up 30% of the shark’s body weight, and
it takes up practically 50% of the inside room of some sharks) The
shark needs a lot of liver to store all the oils for all the energy
it needs, besides the fact that the liver aids with buoyancy, as
aforementioned.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sometimes sharks have two types of muscle tissues, red
and white, kind of like light and dark poultry meat. The red
contains a high concentration of myoglobin that stores oxygen. The
red is used frequently on long trips, and the energy produced while
burning the oxygen is used for heat. White muscle makes up the
majority of the muscle mass, but doesn’t store much oxygen.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The shark has a complex circulatory system, like a
human’s, except with only a three-chambered heart rather than a
four chambered heart, with one big artery entering the heart from the
top. The three-chambered heart appears much less complex than the
four-chambered from the outside. There are veins leading away from
the heart and arteries leading to the heart, passing by the essential
gills on the way.
</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The senses of the shark are very highly specialized and
perfectly sharp. The neurological system is very advanced. The
shark’s hearing is especially amazing--sometimes sharks can hear
things from a mile away. They are especially sensitive to sounds in
the range of 20-300Hz, particularly at or below 40 Hz, which is about
the frequency of a struggling fish. The hole-thing above the eye,
though, is not the ear---that’s the aforementioned spiracle. The
outer ears are very small pore-like objects between the spiracles,
and while the inner ear is very extensive, hidden entirely inside the
otic capsule of the chondrocranium, the outer ear is small and almost
impossible to see without a magnifying glass or hand lens. The inner
ear also contains three semi-circular canals, which, as in humans,
provide the primary sense of balance, besides that provided by the
eye, by way of fluids and salt-like grains flowing past the canals in
a huge hole called the sacculus. The nose is also a wonderful
creation—blacktip sharks have been known to detect fish diluted to
one part per 10 billion parts of seawater. The shark can also smell
from many yards away. Its olfactory organ—or, “nose”—has two
external nares, each with two openings, one lateral, an incurrent
aperture, and one medial, and excurrent aperture. (Feel free to
refer to the attached sketches at any time) A part of the brain
called the olfactory bulbs touches the olfactory sacs, internal
cavities leading out to the nares. The shark actually takes in
water, passes it over some epithelium, or special sensors lining the
sac-insides, and then shoots it out again for more. This water flow
is regulated by a flap of skin between the lateral and medial
apertures. The eye of the shark is probably not as wonderful, and of
course picture quality depends on the quality of the water, but it is
relatively the same as that of the human. Any of you who happen to
be humans focus by changing the shape of the lens—the shark focuses
like a camera, moving the lens further or closer to the retina of the
eye. Just like you humans, the shark has a pupil to regulate the
amount of light entering the eye. The shark has both cone cells and
rod cells, so it can probably detect some color, and sees highly
contrasted objects well, although it is not known how well it can see
subtle details. Many sharks have a tapetum, or reflective layer,
behind the retina that allows them to make the most of the little
light they have. Many also have a nictitating membrane on each eye
that aids to protect the eye during encounters with prey. The shark
also has well-developed touch and taste—developed enough to reject
things it finds distasteful. The tongue is very short, so the shark
can only taste things far in its mouth. The shark also has a very
interesting lateral line system, which only fish and amphibian larvae
have, as far as we know. The connected lateral line canals form a
long line on either side of the shark’s body, just under the skin,
and are exposed to the outside water by little pores. The lateral
line system is made of neuromasts, which are the ciliated sensory
cells in the canals, and detects water current, so the shark can tell
if something is moving the water nearby and in what direction.
Another interesting feature of sharks is the ability to detect
electric fields produced by the bodies of some organisms. The fields
are detected by the pores of ampullae of lorenzini, which lead to the
ampullae of lorenzini, which store a jelly-like solution and are
attached to a sensory nerve. This aids the shark in knowing where
the prey is when it’s very close and just about to bite. They can
use this also to detect buried prey as the sharks go over the
ocean-bottom. The pores are on the underside of the snout and are
huge and clearly visible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">SHARK LIFE</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sharks have many different modes of reproduction.
Sharks do not stay together for life, and only come together during
mating season. The male has two claspers, which are modified pelvic
fins for transmission of sperm, on its underside, near the pelvic
fins, and the female has nothing but the cloaca and the pelvic fins.
Sharks utilize internal fertilization. Mating gets very violent as
the males will hold the females with their teeth to put them in the
mating position, which is why females have skin twice as thick. Some
sharks breed year round, and others migrate to a mating ground every
two years or so. Sharks tend to give birth in the summer, or spring,
or when the water is a tolerable temperature, not too hot and not too
cold. It is thought that female sharks give off pheromones, special
smells, when they are ready to mate, to let the males know they’re
available. This is when it ceases to be all the same for every
species. Some sharks are oviparous, and lay the fertilized eggs to
hatch on their own. Some sharks are live bearing. Some live bearing
sharks use placental vivipary, where the embryo is attached to the
mother and receives nutrients from her. Others have the embryo
attached to a yolk-sack within the uterus. If the yolk ever runs
out, the embryo will eat other embryos or eat the unfertilized eggs
in the oviduct that leads to the uterus tubes. Once the shark hatches
or is born, it looks just like its parent and is on its own.
Sometimes the mother will eat her babies. <sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote10sym" name="sdendnote10anc" sdfixed=""><sup>v</sup></a>ii</sup></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sharks have varying lifestyles. Many migrate
vertically, and many migrate from south to north for breeding and
temperature changes. Sharks also tolerate a wide range of pressures.
<i>Centroscymnus coelolepis</i>
has been found at depths of 8000 ft, while some sharks are restricted
to 600 ft. Most sharks are carnivorous and feed on fairly large
prey. All sharks have wonderful sensory reception and low
intelligence, although the temperament varies from species to
species. The sand shark (<i>Carcharhinus
plumbeus)</i> is sluggish and “lazy” while
the tiger shark has been known to actually consume people for no
reason at all. Some sharks live on the bottom, some in the middle,
and some are pelagic, on the top of the ocean. A shark’s lifestyle
depends on the shark. <sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote11sym" name="sdendnote11anc" sdfixed=""><sup>v</sup></a>iii</sup></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<sup><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<sup><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">THE SHARK AND YOU</span></sup></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<sup><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is hard to write about the shark without mentioning
what it has to do with you. Despite the ideas the Jaws series
inspired, sharks do not eat people, and the actions of one or two
deranged individuals should not dishonor the species. There are a
few more dangerous types of sharks—the tiger shark, the lemon
shark, large hammerheads, and the great white. These are the ones
most likely to attack without provocation. Often it seems they
simply wonder what you are and taste you, like a baby does. It just
so happens that you taste awful, or something, because they don’t
eat you, but rather take a bite and leave. This bite, though,
unfortunately results in the loss of limbs or even in fatalities.
Swimmers are more vulnerable than surfers, presumably because
swimmers look more like food. Actually, though, more people die from
wasp stings than white shark attacks. Off of Virginia there has only
been one fatal attack since 1670, and 3 non-fatal attacks. And while
you think about that, why not “tasting” a shark? Your taste
would be much more fatal to a shark than his would be to you. Shark
meat is wonderfully boneless, the best meat being firm and flaky.
The Atlantic Mako is an especially popular meat shark, because it
makes lovely leaps and runs when hooked. Conservation is important,
but there are many shark species that are not endangered and taste
good, too! For shark fishing, make sure you have some kind of rope,
hook, and pole, as well as something on your 35 to 40 ft. boat to
lift the shark out of the water with. When you have gutted your
shark, make sure to get all the blood out, or the meat will turn
brown and taste very dry. You can do it just like you would to any
other large fish, although instead of scraping off scales, you skin
it—kind of like hunting and fishing together. You can soak your
filets in an acidic solution like lemon juice to further remove any
yuckiness. When you preserve it, double-wrap your shark and use
un-iodized salt, like kosher salt—otherwise the shark will spoil
and turn black. Glaze the inside of any crock you use, preferably
plastic, after soaking the shark in a salt brine to make absolutely
sure you got all the blood out. After washing and draining, you can
put the shark in the crock layered with salt, covering the last layer
of shark with about an inch of salt. Shark meat can make anything
from fin soup to teriyaki! Just make sure you use the whole shark
and don’t waste these magnificent creatures! <sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote12sym" name="sdendnote12anc" sdfixed=""><sup>i</sup></a>x</sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">THE DOGFISH SHARK</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Our shark is a spiny dogfish, <i>Squalus
acanthias</i>, from the family squalidae in the
suborder squaloidei in the order sqauliformes. This order contains 7
families and 113 species like dogfish, cookie cutter sharks,
spurdogs, rough sharks, etc. The sharks in this order range in size
from less than 8 in. to over 20 ft. They all reproduce live bearing
without placenta, as far as we know.
</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The spiny dogfish shark has a gray/brown dorsal surface
dotted laterally with white spots that fade as the dogfish gets
older. It has no anal fin, almost perfectly equilateral pectoral
fins, a rear dorsal fin behind the pelvic fins, and a caudal fin
without a ridge or chip out of it. The dogfish has large, beautiful
eyes and a kind of flat head. Like the smooth dogfish, it has two
rows of low, grinding teeth, but also a row of small, sharp teeth.
It also has a spine in front of its dorsal fins which it can us in
defense by doubling up like a bow and striking the mildly venomous
spine into its attacker.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The spiny dogfish is migratory, found primarily north of
Cape Cod in the summer and south in the winter. It lives at almost
any depth and prefers highly saturated sea-water to brackish
freshwater. The deepest known depth of a spiny dogfish was 2950 ft.
</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The dogfish is a social shark and travels in groups
segregated by size and sex. Medium sized males travel with medium
sized males, and big females with big females, and so on. Only the
immature dogfish travel in mixed sex groups, although still sticking
with sharks their own sizes. The dogfish got its English name from
the way these sharks travel in packs and attack the small fish in
their way.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The spiny dogfish eats crustaceans like the smooth
dogfish, but feeds primarily on small fish such as herring. It often
tears fishing nets to get what’s inside and is a pest to commercial
fishing.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The spiny dogfish’s age has been found by growth zones
on its spine, and dogfish can live between 25 to 30 or even more
years. The dogfish has the longest gestation period of any known
vertebrae—almost two years! The spiny dogfish also grows up very
slowly. The Peter Pan of sharks, the spiny dogfish female isn’t
mature until at least 12 years of age! The dogfish’s size upon
reaching maturity varies from climate to climate. It grows between 1
½ to 3 feet in length, the largest around 4 ft.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The spiny dogfish is an aggressive little shark, the
young pups attacking fish two or three times their sizes. It is no
real harm to man, although the spines can prove dangerous upon
handling of this shark, and no dogfish shark that we know of has ever
killed a human being.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Although the spiny dogfish is considered a bore to
sportsfishermen and a pest to commercial fishermen, its flesh is
flaky and firm like haddock and well-loved in Europe. If you eat
fish and chips, the fish is very likely the spiny dogfish. x</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And that’s it! We hope you enjoyed our whirlwind tour
into the life of a shark. The typist has especially come to love the
dogfish shark, and hopes that you did, too, or at least came to enjoy
the magnificent sharks the Lord has placed on this planet! Googling
“shark” will give you lots of results—try it some time, dissect
a shark, write a report, and tell us if you don’t discover
something amazing!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">--Phillip Hines, Joy Lee, Megan Poe, and Jennifer
Veldhuyzen</span></div>
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<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Bibliography <i> </i>
</span></div>
<div id="sdendnote1">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote1anc" name="sdendnote1sym">i</a>
Hawaii sharks.com—internet on sharks</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote2">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote2anc" name="sdendnote2sym">ii</a>
Encyclopedia Americana</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote3">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote3anc" name="sdendnote3sym">iii</a>
BeachNet.com—Sharks in the Delaware-Chesapeake area</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote4">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote4anc" name="sdendnote4sym">iv</a>
Ichthyology at the Florida Museum of Natural
History—website
</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote5">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote5anc" name="sdendnote5sym">i</a>v
Shark diving of coast of South
Africa—diving—website hosted by TopHosting</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote6">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote6anc" name="sdendnote6sym">i</a><sup>vi</sup>
Photo Manual and Dissection Guide of the Shark by Fred
Bohensky, Avery Publishing, copyright 1981</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote7">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote7anc" name="sdendnote7sym">v</a><sup>ii</sup>
all information from this paragraph and the 8
paragraphs proceeding are from the Hawaii Shark.com thing, the Photo
Manual, or personal experience…hee hee</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote8">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote8anc" name="sdendnote8sym">v</a><sup>iii</sup>
all info in this paragraph from sources stated in
footnotes i through vi</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote9">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote9anc" name="sdendnote9sym">i</a><sup>x</sup>
numbers from source iv—fishing and other information
from source i<span lang="zh-CN">㶷䱩</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote10">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote10anc" name="sdendnote10sym">v</a>x
All information on the spiny dogfish came from
iii and iv, as well as the Montery Bay Aquarium website and
SeaPics.com.<span lang="hi-IN">ႜ</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote11">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote11anc" name="sdendnote11sym">v</a><span lang="zh-CN">禽</span></span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div id="sdendnote12">
<div class="sdendnote-western" lang="en-US">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdendnote12anc" name="sdendnote12sym">i</a><span lang="zh-CN">솧</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-3488807689908181122014-08-25T14:28:00.002-07:002014-08-25T14:28:28.147-07:00Leaves of Impermanence, Colors of Time: Seasonal Imagery in Selected Nara Poetry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times;">Leaves of Impermanence, Colors of Time: Seasonal
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<span style="font-family: Times;">Fall Semester, 2008</span></div>
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Jen Veldhuyzen</div>
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Prof. Gustav Heldt</div>
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JPTR 335</div>
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25 September 2008</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times;">Leaves of Impermanence, </span>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times;">Colors of Time: Seasonal Imagery in Selected Nara
Poetry</span></div>
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As the leaves outside the dorm room finally begin to fall, hailing
the end of this summer inferno without air conditioning, first year
students everywhere glory in the coming of autumn. Much like these
first year students, the Japanese poets of the Nara period give a
special significance to the seasons and their transitions. In poetry,
yearly times of change illustrate the stages of human life in many
facets, altering the literary view of knowledge, growth, and beauty.
In the poetry of Kakinomo no Hitomaro and his predecessor, seasons
explain the phases of human life, investigate the transience of
existence, and extend that discussion of transience to the political
realm, finally providing a means to compare the individual’s
relationship to society and time.
</div>
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The Man’yôshü poets used seasons to expound on a reasonably wide
range of topics but the most blatantly obvious imagery pertains to a
discourse on the phases of human life. Every life begins in the
youth of spring, continues strongly through the peak years of summer,
and begins to fade away as the autumn brings winter in “an
aesthetic of impermanence.” (65) In one of the earliest poems in
the Man’yôshü the poet Lady Nukata answers the question as to
which of the seasons, spring or fall, she prefers. Nukata admits
that even she, a great noblelady, must “leave the green [leaves]
with longing, and that is [her] only regret.” (66, lines 8-9) In
other words, we all pass into phases, such as death, where we must
leave behind former treasures, former ‘green leaves.’ The
question really addresses Nukata’s degree of willingness to release
her hold on the impermanent.
</div>
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For an answer to the comparison between spring and autumn, Nukata
first treats the greatness and the shortcomings of spring: the
seasons of youth or strength in our lives. When we enter the spring
seasons of life we enjoy many blessings, many ‘green leaves,’ but
“the grass is so deep that nothing can be seen.” (66, line 4) If
spring is youth or strength, Lady Nukata’s ‘deep grass’ can
refer to the greatness of the opportunities and the freshness of the
distractions before us that keep us from understanding and plucking
substance out of our lives. The hindrance of the ‘deep grass’
finally moves Lady Nukata to choose the autumn hills in the last line
of the poem. She writes that, in contrast to spring, the autumn
season brings wisdom, the ability to “see the tree leaves/And pick
the yellow ones with wonder.” (66, lines 9-10) As she inevitably
leaves one phase of her physical lifespan to enter the door of
another, she recognizes a need to understand and gather from each
phase she enters.</div>
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While for Lady Nukata spring and autumn seasons point to evanescent
phases, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro uses the seasons in his Yoshino praise
poems to express power and control. The Empress Jitô has
symbolically identified herself with her predecessors by visiting the
Yoshino palace, and as she looks out from it onto the land, Hitomaro
writes her a glory poem. Overall, it speaks using contrasting pairs
to establish her legitimate reign over all areas of life, from the
mountains to the rivers. The seasonal imagery arises as “the
mountain gods present their offerings/bringing her blossoms in the
spring/and yellow leaves when autumn comes…”(73, lines 7-9) This
section serves a two-fold purpose. On one level, these can be read
as praises of the Empress’s person. A woman gifted with ‘blossoms
in the spring’ is physically blessed with the power and beauty of
youth. Similarly, a woman who has picked the yellow leaves of autumn
has gathered other features such as grace and wisdom. A person
possessing both characteristics of spring and autumn makes a good
ruler; she has everything needed to qualify her. Another purpose of
these symbols is the element of homage. The mountain gods relinquish
the spring and the autumn to Jitô. She controls both ends of the
spectrum, from spring to fall, her power encompassing not only the
extremes of time but also both sides of nature’s character. In
this way, the seasons give insight into her reign.</div>
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The seasons come into play in a more intriguing way in Hitomaro’s
poetry when it becomes difficult to reconcile the fragility of
humanity with the god-like power assigned to human political leaders
and governments. In his poems on Prince Karu’s hunting forays
Hitomaro almost manages to move beyond the political praise. When
Hitomaro compares “our lord who passed away” to “the autumn
leaves” (75, line 3) he uses an incredibly commonplace comparison
without elaboration or discussion on the emperor’s divine leaving,
essentially saying that just like everyone else and the leaves, the
emperor died. The near bluntness of this statement, placing the
bygone emperor on a transient plane, not only illuminates the passing
nature of political governments themselves but also brings the
emperor down to the rest of humanity.
</div>
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It can be argued that this reading of the text forces into Hitomaro’s
poetry an egalitarian worldview that should not be assumed given the
historical context. Point taken--however, in the next <i>tanka</i>
Hitomaro continues, “the blaze can be seen rising…the moon has
set,” (75, second poem) indicating that though the emperor has died
there is a new power. Hitomaro supposedly writes the poem
legitimizing the authority of the new prince, Karu, (74) and the sun
rising represents this boy’s ascent to the throne. However, the
sun will set again. The summer reign of the “peer of the sun”
(line 6 of the first short poem, 75) can end in autumn leaves. There
is always a higher power, says Hitomaro. He ends his poem series
with a short <i>tanka </i>emphasizing the eternality of the dynasty
by linking Karu to his predecessor using mixed tenses. “The time
IS COMING,” Hitomaro writes, “when the prince who WAS the pier of
the sun…/set out to hunt.” (emphasis mine, last <i>tanka</i>)
This time confusion allows the life of the past emperor to describe
what Karu will do in the future (75). Despite the projected
confidence in the ruling political power, however, there is always
the knowledge that the previous sun did set. There will always be a
cycle. The government, centralized around one person, may establish
a near-permanence in its god-like dynasty, but times will always
continue to change as people pass on. The double-nature of the short
poems on the hunting trip works because of the slightest seasonal
symbolism. Remove the images of the autumn leaves and the sun, and
you have a praise poem completely lacking any other interior meaning.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" lang="en-US" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
Hitomaro continued to milk the seasons of political uses in his <i>Poems
On Passing the Ruined Capital of Ömi</i>, this time extending the
idea of human transience from emperors to apply to societies. This
time the complication arises in acknowledging a capital that has
fallen out of favor. The Ömi capital had once housed the emperor
Tenchi, held in high esteem by the ruling Yamato court, but on the
other hand it had housed the enemies of the current regime. (79) The
reconciliation or appeasement of the Ömi court spirits occurs when
Hitomaro recognizes the beauty and power of the court throughout the
beginning of the poem and then uses seasonal imagery to show that the
political transitions were natural and inevitable.</div>
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Hitomaro acknowledges then that the “divine sovereign,” Tenchi,
(line 13) chose to rule at Ömi, but then moves on from his
description of the rocky, “barbarous” landscape (lines 11-12) to
speak of an appropriate replacement. Spring always ushers in the
new, and in lines 16-17 we read, “Here were his glorious halls/Now
all is overgrown by the spring grass/And clouded by the haze of the
spring sun.”(80) The new ‘sun,’ and the new emperor, cloud over
the glory of the old regime. The spring has come, conquering the
cold environment, and the new courtiers and new actions of the court
have overgrown and overtaken the old. The spring transition
emphasizes not merely the transience of the old regime, but also the
greatness of the new. At the same time, however, Hitomaro continues
to say in the final line that “we are filled with sadness,”
illuminating his nostalgia of the passing phases that society must
inevitably leave behind. Only the use of the seasons can express the
necessity of forward motion while touching so tenderly and naturally
on that which came before. Entire capitals, like emperors and
humans, fade into the past to give way to a greater future.
</div>
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Court society, however transient, held a bond over Hitomaro that he
recognized. His poetry did not necessarily come voluntarily; the
government commissioned him to write praise poems and undoubtedly
kept him separated from his family. The seasons in his <i>Poems on
Parting With His Wife At Iwami </i>illustrate the special human
conflict with time and society’s consuming demands by fleshing out
the speaker’s internal struggle with his desire for his beloved and
his timed duty to court.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" lang="en-US" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
The speaker speaks of his time with the girl in summer terms. She
felt to him like a warm sea, and Hitomaro puts forth many beach and
seaweed metaphors in the first lines to illustrate the pleasure the
lovers experience together. (81-82) The speaker’s time with his
beloved is cut short, however, by his requirements to the court and
ultimately to society. He thinks of her “wilting with sorrow/like
the summer grass” (82, line 13). The heat of their love and the
passion they feel in separating themselves leaves the girl wilted.
As time moves the seasons on, so time has cut short their moments
together in the name of the court. The girl must move on from the
summer they both feel inside as the speaker leaves her “like the
dew and the frost.” (line 7) The separation quickly creates a
winter. There is limited contact from afar in Hitomaro’s day, and
the two feel keenly the cold cruelty that time has inflicted on them.
The memories together become like dew and frost, like cold
transparencies, as the summer grass wilts.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" lang="en-US" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
The speaker is separated from his girl by autumn, the parting that
brings the pair from summer together to winter apart. “Through the
yellow leaves as they scatter/I cannot see my girl waving her
sleeves” (83, 12 line on page) Yellow leaves are autumn’s
messangers, the servants and soldiers of time that take us away into
the future and obscure our connections with the past and present.
They are the driftings and partings in life that interrupt as the
winds of time pass. They are the commitments that take the speaker
away and fly between the lovers. The speaker must move forward, away
from the summers he spent with his girl, on to the winter of court
life, through the parting of autumn.
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" lang="en-US" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
However, even as the yellow leaves force the speaker from summer to
winter, they themselves are also passing away on the wind. “Yellow
leaves, falling on the autumn hill/ Stop scattering for just a
while/So I may see the village of my girl,” requests Hitomaro.
(84) The scattering need not continue forever. The wind may die
down. The changing of the seasons continues unchangeably, and by
using the seasons to describe his departure Hitomaro offers hope that
the speaker may return. He poignantly requests in this last stanza
that he be allowed to rejoin or at least see his beloved, in the hope
that the court, like weather, is not permanent. Interestingly
enough, Hitomaro uses similar yellow-leaf language to address the
death of the woman in a later poem (84). Using the seasons always
indicates that if a current situation is unsatisfactory, it may alter
itself over time. Perhaps even death possesses a seasonal quality,
hints Hitomaro’s usage. </div>
<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" lang="en-US" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
Seasons illustrate human transience. Hitomaro took this idea and
extended it in his poetry, analyzing this transience in respect to
the emperors he praised to remind his readers of a humanity that came
hand in hand with their ‘godhood.’ He used the seasons to praise
his clients, but also showed that their position as humans came with
a fading quality. This fading quality does not limit itself to the
human individual, he pointed out, but to entire societies. The
individual has hope, and indeed, value because the society above him
is transient. When the master limps, the servant has more equal
footing. While society may work as an agent of time to move us
forward, we all have the hope that in the even further future we may
stand on our own terms again. Just as autumn follows summer, spring
follows winter, and our lives are most valuable when we can take the
most insight and internal beauty out of the time we have been given.
Hope, then, is the knowledge that we may pick the autumn leaves that
keep us from our dreams and discover that beyond them there may be a
greener field.</div>
</div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-9483800787092283112013-12-15T09:36:00.002-08:002015-05-09T21:17:03.411-07:00How The Ethan Couch Case is About The Advantages of Wealth, Not Race<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Ethan Couch case is about the advantages of wealth, not race, and if we want to overcome the prejudices against the impoverished black community as a whole, we need to understand that.<br />
<br />
If you just think about it with me you'll see why. Take this scenario: a well-dressed, wealthy good-looking young black man (who probably gets straight As and comes from a "good" family) approaches you late at night on the street, dressed in a button-down shirt and tie or at the very least a polo and khakis, and he asks you the time in "perfect" polite English. Now, a dirty-looking white guy with his pants hanging down around his knees, a du-rag wrapped around his head, long-hair and a cigarette in his hands slouches towards you asking you the same question in slurred, cursing speech. Who makes you uncomfortable? <br />
<br />
Most people, regardless of race, answer the white guy, if they really think about it. Most importantly, MOST PREJUDICED WHITE PEOPLE today would answer the white guy JUST because of the way he's dressed. If you don't believe me, ask your slightly-racist white friends, if you have any, and I bet you $50 the majority of them will answer the pants-down guy.<br />
<br />
There's nothing wrong with wearing a du-rag, wearing your pants kind of down, or having long hair as a male; smoking's legal if he's over 18, and lots of nice people curse (like me, dammit). Middle and upper-class Americans just have cultural stigmas against those things. Now, my pants-down-white guy is wearing a stereotype that's unfortunately been applied to black people because inequalities in American history put a disproportionate number of black people in lower socio-economic tiers. But <i>today's</i> prejudices against black youth really are related to Povertenza, not "black-enza."<br />
<br />
Now put the well-dressed black youth and the pants-down white guy in court, and you see what I'm getting at. I'm not saying that, all <i>other </i>things equal, a well-dressed educated black man and a well-dressed educated white man will have the same outcomes, because honestly, those cases don't comprise the majority of the unjust sentencing stories. Look back at the news over this year: in almost every major case of unjust sentencing against a black person where the black person LOST, the black person came from a lower socio-economic tier. Every time the black person comes from a higher socio-economic tier (like when the stupid white policeman tried to arrest a black Harvard professor entering his own house), there's a better outcome (the stupid white policeman got in trouble). All <i>other</i> things equal, class is a much more damning factor because we still judge by appearances. We've all heard in school that racism's bad, and that's incredibly important. But no one goes around teaching the kids about classism, which is arguably a deeper financial wound against the black community. Instead, we've got wealthy and middle-class folks white AND black telling their kids that poor black people just didn't work hard enough, rather than trying to give a kid a hand.<br />
<br />
Ethan Couch got off because of affluenza. No one on the defense said he should get off because he's white. I think that's very telling about where our court system's come from, and how far our society still has to go before it finds true equality.<br />
<br />
Oh, and if you asked your slightly-racist white friends about this scenario, you owe me $50. My paypal is petrepan at gmail. (Help me overcome my new-found povertenza)</div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-40928346795961899962013-07-26T12:29:00.001-07:002013-07-26T12:29:33.589-07:00Heart Health Benefits of Red Wine--and Local Wine-Pairing Program<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Tomorrow, on Saturday, July 27th, Charlottesvillians and food
enthusiasts of Albemarle county will gather at Ducard Vineyards for a
continuation of the Food and Wine Pairing Program.<br />
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"These will be small group, seated tastings in the new barrel room
where we'll have in-depth tastings of our current releases," said a
Ducard representative in an e-mail to Examiner.<br />
<br />
The menu, according to Ducard's website, will showcase various
summer-vacation-style items including crabcakes, cheese, bruschetta,
sausage, and chocolates.<br />
<br />
Visitors will also try vintage wines straight from the barrel in the
60 degree Fahrenheit cellar, said the Ducard representative--a welcome
escape from the sweltering summer vacation heat.<br />
<br />
Alcohol produces tissue-damaging ketones that promote oxidation and
free radical production, primarily in the liver; Charlottesville's red
wine, however, may promote heart and vein health, according to a June 27
study in Autonomic Neuroscience this year.<br />
<br />
Scientists have long suspected that antioxidants called polyphenols
in red wine and grape juice may prevent or treat hypertension, or high
blood pressure, but they hadn't fully studied the effects on cardiac
autonomic function, according to the June 27 study. This means they
didn't know how red wine affected the heart's control of its beat.<br />
<br />
<i>So how does red wine affect your heartbeat? Read more here! </i>http://exm.nr/15RiAvE</div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-18425026625448067432013-04-22T09:08:00.003-07:002013-04-22T09:08:57.587-07:00 Nine tulip flavors for salads & appetizers from Charlottesville's organic tulips<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/tulips">Tulips</a>
of different flavors offer different tastes, which gives aspiring
appetizer-artists and salad-creators a number of options. Before buying
tulips, it may help to know which flavors offer which colors, so here <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/charlottesville">Charlottesville</a>'s <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/nutrition">Nutrition</a> Examiner presents a list of nine flower-flavors for <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/a-taste-of-tulips-april-flower-festival-harbors-charlottesville-flavors">Charlottesville's explorative organic eaters.</a><br />
<br />
<div class="western">
Some thoughts before consuming petals: EcoTulips Vice
President Keriann S. Koeman recommends thorough washing to remove
pollen, which will give a strong peppery taste that burns the back of
the throat. She implores consumers to avoid non-organic tulips for
consumption: the powerful pesticides used on normally non-food flowers
may be harmful to human <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/health">health</a>.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Nutritively, there's little information on the value
of these petals, but certain colors in vegetation often indicate the
presence of certain nutrients, says Koeman. The red and orange, for
example, usually indicates the presence of <a href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/252758.php" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">beta-carotene,</a>
a substance that helps vitamin A improve skin, eye, and immune system
health. While there aren't many documented tulip consumption allergies,
data mined from dictionaries and encyclopedias indicates that some
people do have <a href="http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Tulipa+gesneriana" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">dermatitis reactions</a> in response to petal consumption. <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12910870" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Animals who have eaten the bulb</a> and the petals have died because of the anti-nutritives in the bulb, so it's important to look at <a href="http://www.examiner.com/list/5-ways-for-charlottesvillians-to-eat-organic-tulips-yes-tulips/to-bulb-or-not-to-bulb">preparation warnings</a> before bulb consumption; Examiner.com offers <a href="http://www.examiner.com/list/5-ways-for-charlottesvillians-to-eat-organic-tulips-yes-tulips">several tulip cooking ideas</a>.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Without further ado, click to discover nine tulip petal flavors, or visit an <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/a-taste-of-tulips-april-flower-festival-harbors-charlottesville-flavors">organic tulip festival</a> to try other varieties in person.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<a href="http://www.examiner.com/list/ten-tulip-flavors-for-salads-appetizers-from-charlottesville-s-organic-tulips">http://www.examiner.com/list/ten-tulip-flavors-for-salads-appetizers-from-charlottesville-s-organic-tulips</a></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-66485999923283911772013-04-22T09:04:00.005-07:002013-04-22T09:05:37.190-07:005 ways for Charlottesvillians to eat organic tulips<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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With <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/spring">spring</a> picking season in full-swing for the nation's only certified <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/organic">organic</a> <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/tulip/articles">tulip</a> supplier, a Charlottesville flower-expert opened up for Examiner about five edible possibilities for Holland's favorite bloom.</div>
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Keriann S. Koeman started Charlottesville's local <a href="http://www.ecotulips.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">EcoTulips</a>
with her Dutch husband in 2009 with an emphasis on pesticide-free,
farmer-friendly tulip growth. Like Charlottesville itself, the company's
success grew out of international influence, and influence from local
farming backgrounds.<br />
<br />
Now, EcoTulips sells tulips at $1 per stem during picking season, and
online for a bit more for the rest of the year. The company recently
branched out to sell USDA-certified Dahlias, and they run a partnership
program for schools, churches, and nonprofits interested in using tulips
for fundraising.<br />
<br />
While most customers arrive to the field to see and maybe smell the
flowers, Koeman offered several tips for taste. Nearly--nearly is the
key word here--all the parts of a tulip are edible and like lettuce
or other greens, relatively healthy.<br />
<br />
<i>Read on for five edible tulip tips.</i><br />
<a href="http://www.examiner.com/list/5-ways-for-charlottesvillians-to-eat-organic-tulips-yes-tulips">http://www.examiner.com/list/5-ways-for-charlottesvillians-to-eat-organic-tulips-yes-tulips</a></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-70174811244561928182013-04-22T09:02:00.004-07:002013-04-22T09:05:11.600-07:00 Ch-ch-ch-chia Charlottesville: Where to buy chia's top 3 health benefits via Examiner.com<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/chia/articles">Chia</a>
seeds, once popular as the 1980's green-haired clay pet, have made a
comeback as a health-food throughout the nation--and
Charlottesville--with rumors of weight loss, high-protein <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/energy">energy</a>, and even diabetic help.<br />
<br />
Chia seeds first became popular with the Mayans, who drank them,
ground them into flour, and mixed them as oils as early as 3500 BC; the
later Aztecs believed one tablespoon could sustain a warrior for 24
hours, and they treated chia as a sign of strength. When the Aztecs
conquered other peoples, they demonstrated that strength by demanding
chia seeds as tribute, symbolically as well as literally "sapping the
strength" from their enemies.<br />
<br />
Today's chia-consumers may see chia differently--more as a food for
"back-to-nature" health-hippies than violent warrior's fare--but the
nutritional requirements remain the same. To help health-conscious readers track down the elusive black-and-white marbled seeds, Charlottesville's <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/nutrition">Nutrition</a>
Examiner contacted grocery stores across Charlottesville to discover
who's stocking. When possible, Examiner dug up prices to help
Charlottesville's health-nuts compare cost. Charlottesville-area chia
shopping grounds include:<br />
<ul>
<li> Kroger on Barrack's Road (1159 Emmet St N) stocks three or four varieties ranging around $9.99 for a small bag.</li>
<li> Kroger at 1980 Rio Hill Center stocks a 16 oz box for $9.49 and a 1 lb bag $21.99.</li>
<li> Whole Foods on 1797 Hydraulic Rd stocks several different brands
between $6.99 and $17.99. Organic varieties begin with a Whole Foods
Brand 15 oz bag at $18.99, Nutiva brand $16.99 for 12 oz bag, and
Navitas $17.99 for 16 oz bag. Conventional brands stocked include
Spectrum, at $12.99 for a 12 oz bag, and The Chia Company on sale
through end of April 2013 with $6.99 for a 5 oz bag, 17 oz bags for
$16.99, 12 oz bags for $15.99, and 35 oz tubs for $26.99.</li>
</ul>
Are the health benefits worth the costs? Our Charlottesville
Nutrition Examiner checked current scientific research to find out.
Click forward for the top 3 scientifically-proven health benefits of
chia.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.examiner.com/list/ch-ch-ch-chia-charlottesville-where-to-buy-chia-s-top-3-health-benefits">http://www.examiner.com/list/ch-ch-ch-chia-charlottesville-where-to-buy-chia-s-top-3-health-benefits</a></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-82774206252735751932013-04-22T08:57:00.001-07:002013-04-22T08:57:35.338-07:00Three protein-rich international drinks for Charlottesville's culinary explorers via Examiner.com<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Exotic <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/protein">protein</a> drinks don't always bring overbearing supermarket pricetags: Charlottesville's international tastes begin in the kitchen.</div>
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<div class="western" lang="en-US">
Charlottesville's
surrounded by local farms celebrating sustainable and 'Down-to-Earth'
food choices and the city's filled with international influences drawn
by the University of Virginia. These two factors create a mixing-bowl of
health lovers and brave culinary adventurers, making Charlottesville a
food haven for residents interested in wild homemade shakes.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US">
Sometimes blending
these two interests so inherent to Charlottesville's culture presents a
challenge from a health perspective, especially as someone searching for
high-protein shakes. Everyone enjoys wild eats, but making them
healthy? These three <a class="inline_link" href="http://www.examiner.com/topic/recipes">recipes</a>
bring Latin America, East Asia, and Europe into the kitchen without
sacrificing too much health-wise: The first two drinks pack gobs of
healthy protein almost unrivaled in the plant kingdom.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US">
The last drink, a new
twist on a Danish dish, trades some health for ingenuity, but the drink
remains high-protein as promised. Each recipe includes local shopping
tips to make it easier for Charlottesville's oral explorers to enjoy
world-wide muscle-building tastes.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US">
<i>Read the rest of my article here:</i> </div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US">
<br /></div>
<a href="http://exm.nr/11h7Pl7">http://exm.nr/11h7Pl7</a></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-80478386903673386422013-04-12T12:41:00.000-07:002013-04-12T12:41:13.200-07:00Jedi Mind Control: Serious Gaming for the Human Brain via InsertQuarterly<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="vertical-align: text-top;">
<strong><span style="color: black;">I</span>t’s time gamers took gaming more seriously.</strong></div>
<div style="vertical-align: text-top;">
<br /></div>
That’s not a cry commonly heard from our friends, families, or even
the rest of the gaming community, although analysts are now yammering
about changing the way we value games. A while back the popular <a href="http://bit.ly/10VZrVj" target="_blank">Extra Credits</a>
game analysts chastised video game critics and developers for focusing
on “fun” at the expense of artistic expression: we put art in a
suffocating and ultimately withering box, they say, when we forget that
games have other intellectual value besides Mario-parties in our brains.
Games are not just fun–they’re a legitimate and serious artistic
outlet.<br />
<br />
It’s a decent argument, but not a common one, and while arguably many
game developers–especially indie outfits like ever-philosophical <a href="http://www.ludomancy.com/blog/sown/" target="_blank">Daniel Benmergui</a>–do
focus on art beyond fun, we rarely talk about games in the mind of the
consumer. If critics need to take games as art more seriously, maybe
there’s an even greater need for<br />
<br />
<i>FOR WHAT??? AND WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH JEDI??? Well you'll have to click for that, won't you. </i><br />
<i>Check out the rest here! </i><br />
<a href="http://insertquarterly.com/2013/04/12/jedi-mind-control-serious-gaming-for-the-human-brain/">http://insertquarterly.com/2013/04/12/jedi-mind-control-serious-gaming-for-the-human-brain/</a></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-61734447463376790232013-04-12T07:57:00.003-07:002013-04-12T07:58:00.406-07:00Layers of Healing: Realizing the Power of the Ordinary Onion--via the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia For Info<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
They’re a staple in stews, a flavor in fried foods, and that ’sting’
in salads. The sharp, savory taste and juicy crunch give them
versatility in the kitchen cooked and uncooked — but they really deserve
a place in your permaculture medicine cabinet.<br />
<br />
That’s right–the ordinary onion.<br />
<br />
I’d never have believed it either, but one day, in the agony of an
ear infection, I read that an onion sliver could help quell the
infection and calm the pain. My ear ached so badly I would have tried
almost anything short of shooting the Queen of England, so...<br />
<br />
<i>So what did I do? Drama, tension, and shockings, oh my! Check out</i> <br />
<br />
<a href="http://permaculturenews.org/2013/04/12/layers-of-healing-realizing-the-power-of-the-ordinary-onion/">http://permaculturenews.org/2013/04/12/layers-of-healing-realizing-the-power-of-the-ordinary-onion/</a><br />
<br />
<i>to find out!</i></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-8001007606732626222013-02-15T21:10:00.002-08:002013-02-15T21:13:19.511-08:00Care2 Petition Fights to Stop Fire Department From Hunting Squirrels--While Children Starve, Killers Go Free, and Lizards Go Extinct<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Folks on the activist site Care2 have raised the alarm and rallied the forces over a truly "cruel and barbaric event"--hunting squirrels.<br />
<br />
Whatever shall we do now.<br />
<br />
"Adults and children as young as 12 can participate, so long as they have
hunting licenses. (Let's not even get into the idea of giving a
12-year-old a hunting license). Participants stalk and kill both grey
and red squirrels with cash prizes for the heaviest catches," reads the e-mail sent out by Emily V. from Care2's Petition Site Team.<br />
<br />
According to the mailing, the Holley, NY Fire Department plans to have a fundraiser where hunters win prizes for bagging the biggest squirrel--and if Emily and her team have anything to say about it, it's not going to happen.<br />
<br />
I don't have a problem with this petition, really. If you hate squirrel-hunting, by all means use your free speech to try to get the rest of the world to stop.<br />
<br />
What I have a problem with is that <i>this</i> mailing, out of all the petitions on the Care2 site, made it to the 'special selections of the week' that hit the mailboxes of millions of subscribers. They've got petitions on Care2 that deal with child abuse and sex trafficking, and they choose a squirrel hunt as one of the <i>most important petitions on the site</i>.<br />
<br />
Their competitor site, Change.org, mails me a story every week about someone imprisoned for their free speech, or sex slaves sold on the internet, or at the very least someone who lost their house to a bank foreclosure. I don't always agree with the petitions--the notorious Trayvon Martin petition came out of Change.org, which I signed and now feel stupid about--but at least they're trying to improve the human condition. At the <i>very</i> least, Change.org writes to me about rare-dolphin-hunting.<br />
<br />
Today, <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-02-17-un-hunger_x.htm">18,000 children</a> will die of hunger, according to the UN. <a href="http://listen.nycagainstrape.org/learn.html">1,871 women</a> will experience rape. For every 100 babies born in the African American community, wealthy doctors will <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2013/02/15/black-history-month-abortion-has-killed-16-million-black-children/">abort 77</a>. Inequality's everywhere, people are dying around you, and if you really love animals, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/15/reptile-species-face-extinction">1 in 5 reptile species</a> faces extinction.<br />
<br />
But by all means save the cute little squirrels.<br />
<br />
Emily, I love you. You've got awesome intentions, and I love you. But I've got one thing to tell you:<br />
<br />
At least that 12-year-old with a hunting license will know how to <i>eat</i> during the zombie apocalypse.<br />
<br />
At least she can eat now.</div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-9175042440411257912013-02-13T14:16:00.003-08:002013-02-13T14:18:43.710-08:00Mini-news Digest for Feb. 13, 2013: Possible E.Coli in Taylor Farms Spinach, Cool New Black Hole, & Salmon Genetically Engineered<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The FDA sent out an alert today announcing that Salinas Firm has recalled some of its Organic Baby Spinach because of possible E. Coli contamination. Customers who purchased Taylor Farms Organic Baby Spinach products may want to discard the produce; symptoms of E. Coli ingestion include abdominal cramps, fever, and sometimes bloody diarrhea.<br />
<br />
In brighter news, NASA issued a cool press release today. Their Chandra X-Ray suggests a newly discovered black hole W49B burst into existence in a formation pattern unique from other black holes. Why does this matter? NASA scientists don't understand black holes well, so abnormal holes may provide more insight into the forces responsible for their creation. Most supernovas that form black holes blow apart with relatively symmetrical explosions, but supernova W49 blew apart faster at the poles than at the equators, leaving the black hole remnant with a strange, glowing X-ray signature.<br />
<br />
Researchers still aren't absolutely sure that what they're looking at in W49B is a black hole, but they haven't detected a neutron star, which usually forms after a supernova's collapse.<br />
<br />
"It's a bit circumstantial, but we have intriguing evidence the W49B<br />
supernova also created a black hole," said co-author Daniel Castro,<br />
also of MIT. "If that is the case, we have a rare opportunity to<br />
study a supernova responsible for creating a young black hole."<br />
<br />
That's pretty awesome, I think. <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/chandra" target="_blank">http://www.nasa.gov/chandra</a><br />
<br />
"For an additional interactive image, podcast, and video on the<br />
finding, visit:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://chandra.si.edu/" target="_blank">http://chandra.si.edu"</a><br />
<br />
One more thing--if you care about <a href="http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/NewsEvents/CVMUpdates/ucm339270.htm?source=govdelivery">genetically engineered Atlantic Salmon</a>, the FDA's leaving the comment period open for a little longer on AquAdvantage Salmon Documents. These documents would establish a safe-for-the-environment classification for these genetically-enhanced fish, which reach market size much faster than other salmon. So if you feel yay or nay about this, there's your link! I think these sound great from a fish-farming standpoint, but I'm curious to read the final documents released by the EA, since I can't help but imagine super-fast-growing salmon having a predatorial advantage over other fish if they escape into the wild. I'm excited to see that final decision, actually.<br />
<br />
Yeah, I know. Nerd.</div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-87141292271724967512013-02-11T22:23:00.000-08:002013-02-11T22:23:04.702-08:00Why Are TSA-Friendly Bags Important?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<style type="text/css"><!--
@page { size: 21.59cm 27.94cm; margin: 2cm }
P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm }
A:link { so-language: zxx }
--></style>Red eyes
from rising for early flights, heavy luggage digging into sore backs
-- no one enjoys a long TSA line. Most of us worry about whether the
scissors or shampoo bottle belongs in checked luggage or carry-on,
but we don't always think to check if the bag itself is
"TSA-friendly."</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We should, and here's why. </div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
1. Save
Time
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US">Americans
spend about 37 billion hours each year waiting in line, according to
the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waiting-in-line-is-torture.html?pagewanted=all">New
York Times</a>, and we feel every minute of it: last year a man in a
post-office line actually stabbed</span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
another customer he thought had cut in front of him. While hopefully
none of your fellow travelers will knife you for taking ten minutes
to fumble with your laptop, TSA lines drag on enough already. Sticky
zippers, wrapped packages, and oversized carry-on too big for the
x-ray machine just exacerbate the problem. For laptops, <a href="http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/checkpoint-friendly-laptop-bags">the
TSA</a> says bringing the computer by itself in a butterfly-style,
trifold, or sleeve-style laptop bag allows the x-ray machine to show
exactly what's inside--and the TSA officer never needs to open the
case. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
2. Save
Money--Prevent Damaged/Stolen Goods</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
TSA
employees are concerned about public safety, not about those fragile
eye-glasses or that pesky luggage lock--and they have a horrible
record of reimbursement for damaged goods. <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/aug/24/lost-or-damaged-goods-mccarran-international/">In
2009</a>, the TSA reimbursed passengers just 21 cents for each $100
claimed. Don't overstuff bags or cramp them with weirdly-shaped
items, and don't bring bags with sticky or hard-to-open zippers--the
harder it is to get in, the more likely a frustrated TSA agent might
break something by accident. Bag sensitive film separately, and <a href="http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/how-get-through-line-faster">avoid
wrapping</a> that gift or souvenir: the TSA officer may have to
unwrap it, and chances are he doesn't care as much about giving Aunt
Sally a beautiful package as you do.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Organized
bags also help avert theft. According to a <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/tsa-agent-convicted-theft-stealing-bags-common-article-1.1170993">TSA
agent</a> who stole more than $800,000 of carry-on goods, most common
theft occurs while passengers leave their bags to go through metal
detectors. With jumbled, disorganized packing, passengers don't
notice anything's missing until too late: follow <a href="http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/how-get-through-line-faster">TSA
guidelines</a> to pack easy-to-check, organized bags so that you know
exactly what you're carrying--or missing--at all times.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
3. Avert
Danger Like a Hero</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Airport
screeners already suffer the highest injury rate of all non-military
federal employees, according to an <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4441227/ns/health-health_care/t/airport-screeners-have-highest-injury-rate/">AP
Press report</a> in 2004--and there's no point in making their job
harder still. TSA-friendly bags and packing materials prevent
injuries incurred during opening, searching, or carrying baggage. The
<a href="http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/prohibited-items">TSA
requests</a> that travelers sheath or securely wrap all sharp objects
in checked baggage to prevent injury to inspections officers, and
TSA-friendly locks save screeners from having to slice through
steel--which can easily result in slippage and painful cuts. Both
SafeSkies and TravelSentry produce locks which open with universal
<a href="http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/baggage-locks">TSA-certified
keys</a>; prices usually clock in between $11 and $15.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Becoming
TSA-friendly takes a bit of foresight--<a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2327448,00.asp">Alienware,
Briggs & Riley, and others</a> do manufacture high-quality
TSA-friendly laptop-cases and backpacks, but these can range upwards
of $80. If you are a thrifty traveler, you may want to consider
simply carrying two bags, one with organized, easy-to-open
compartments and another just containing a laptop. For checked bags,
select suitcases with multiple, easily-organized compartments and
TSA-friendly locks that work with the universal transit services key.
Remember, solid materials means less chance something will get stuck
in the x-ray machine or rip all over the floor: double-check zippers
and tender seams before departing.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Enjoy your
flight!</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="http://gan.doubleclick.net/gan_click?lid=41000613802463762&pid=PEMBLAWBP18&adurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.travelbagsmall.com%2Fpemblawbp18.html&usg=AFHzDLv1uHU0mRtlrxrbcrp4llnNRaD5uA&pubid=620687" rel="nofollow">Alienware AWBP18 Orion Notebook Backpack With Scanfast- Tm - 18.4 in. (Google Affiliate Ad)</a><a href="http://gan.doubleclick.net/gan_click?lid=41000613802463762&pid=PEMBLAWMC14&adurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.travelbagsmall.com%2Fpemblawmc14.html&usg=AFHzDLsE3SfNaU0BYEPIc5Ce_PVysfSZ8g&pubid=620687" rel="nofollow">Alienware AWMC14 Orion Notebook Messenger Bag With Scanfast- Tm - 14.1 (Google Affiliate Ad)</a> </div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="http://gan.doubleclick.net/gan_click?lid=41000613802463762&pid=PEMBLAWMC14&adurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.travelbagsmall.com%2Fpemblawmc14.html&usg=AFHzDLsE3SfNaU0BYEPIc5Ce_PVysfSZ8g&pubid=620687" rel="nofollow">Alienware AWMC14 Orion Notebook Messenger Bag With Scanfast- Tm - 14.1 (Google Affiliate Ad)</a>
</div>
</div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-91668657419673770342013-02-11T19:44:00.003-08:002013-02-11T19:44:59.143-08:00Today's FDA digest--in which I laugh at Mushroom recalls, which aren't really that funny, and announce approval for pomalidomide, a new cancer drug<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">I</span>f you have bought "C<span style="font-size: small;">uriosity of Dashan Dried Mus<span style="font-size: small;">hroom<span style="font-size: small;">" lately you may want to <span style="font-size: small;">consider <span style="font-size: small;">throwing it away--at least if you <span style="font-size: small;">or a loved one has severe sensitivity to sulfites. The <a href="http://links.govdelivery.com/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwMjExLjE1NDU1NjQxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDIxMS4xNTQ1NTY0MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE3MDM2MDI1JmVtYWlsaWQ9am12N2VAdmlyZ2luaWEuZWR1JnVzZXJpZD1qbXY3ZUB2aXJnaW5pYS5lZHUmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&100&&&http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm338978.htm?source=govdelivery">FDA announced</a> today that DZH Import & Export recalled their dried mushrooms because <span style="font-size: small;">they contain sulfites that th<span style="font-size: small;">e company didn't declare on the packaging. No<span style="font-size: small;">te that this recall is voluntary, and a good move on the part of the business to av<span style="font-size: small;">oid potentially hazardous mistakes.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 2em; text-align: justify;">
More bad mushrooms--today and yesterday the FDA's been repeating <a href="http://links.govdelivery.com/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwMjExLjE1NDU1NjUxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDIxMS4xNTQ1NTY1MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE3MDM2MDI2JmVtYWlsaWQ9am12N2VAdmlyZ2luaWEuZWR1JnVzZXJpZD1qbXY3ZUB2aXJnaW5pYS5lZHUmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&100&&&http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm339140.htm?source=govdelivery">Nestle's voluntary recall</a> of Lean Cuisine Culinary Collection Mushroom
Mezzaluna Ravioli. No, it's not because they only made that food to win the box-food-poetry alliteration contest--apparently their machines
misprinted the "Best Before Date." No biggie, unless you really intended
to keep your mushrooms unfrozen til Dec. 2013. <br /><div class="im">
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Next, the FDA just announced a new training program for<span style="font-size: small;"> foreign <span style="font-size: small;">seafood produce<span style="font-size: small;">rs. </span></span>A</span>ccording to the FD<span style="font-size: small;">A the US imports nearly <span style="font-size: small;">90</span> of its seafood--and much o<span style="font-size: small;">f that seafood is produced by aquaculture, meaning it's grown rather than caught</span>. To combat microbes in often<span style="font-size: small;">-crowded conditions, <span style="font-size: small;">seafood producers stuff fish with antibiotics--and the FDA<span style="font-size: small;">'s <a href="http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/NewsEvents/CVMUpdates/ucm339186.htm">training program</a> <span style="font-size: small;">should tell producers what drugs they can and canno<span style="font-size: small;">t put in <span style="font-size: small;">the fish if they want to make it to American tables.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here's the awesome bit of today: FDA granted accelerated approval to pomalidomide (POMALYST capsules,
Celgene Corporation) for <span style="font-size: small;">"</span>patients with multiple myeloma
who have received at least two prior therapies, including lenalidomide
and bortezomib, and have demonstrated disease progression on or within
60 days of completion of the last therapy." This means that patients with the almost incurable <span style="font-size: small;">bone-cancer, myeloma, have better hope of survival; a study <a href="http://www.myelomabeacon.com/news/2012/10/23/pomalidomide-shows-survival-benefit-in-heavily-pretreated-multiple-myeloma/">last year</a> found that t<span style="font-size: small;">his drug worked for patients <span style="font-size: small;">who seemingly could not improve under other therapies.</span></span></span> <span style="font-size: small;">FDA approval <span style="font-size: small;">for drugs takes <span style="font-size: small;">after three phases <span style="font-size: small;">of research, and it's fr<span style="font-size: small;">ustrating I'm sure that the drug sat in phase three since last year--but such a long <span style="font-size: small;">trial course is normal for most intensive prescription drugs. For</span></span></span></span></span></span> <span style="font-size: small;">now, let's <span style="font-size: small;">welcome pomalidomide and <span style="font-size: small;">hope</span> it performs well to save many lives! For </span>m</span>ore
Information: <a href="http://links.govdelivery.com/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwMjExLjE1NDU2OTExJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDIxMS4xNTQ1NjkxMSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE3MDM2MDU4JmVtYWlsaWQ9am12N2VAdmlyZ2luaWEuZWR1JnVzZXJpZD1qbXY3ZUB2aXJnaW5pYS5lZHUmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&100&&&http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/InformationOnDrugs/ApprovedDrugs/ucm339286.htm?source=govdelivery" target="_blank">http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/<wbr></wbr>InformationOnDrugs/<wbr></wbr>ApprovedDrugs/ucm339286.htm</a> </span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-18526682865831642072013-02-11T19:34:00.003-08:002013-02-11T19:35:22.548-08:00NASA launches New Earth Observation Satellite<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) roared<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>into space at 1:02 p.m. EST (10:02 a.m. PST) Monday aboard an Atlas V<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, according to <span style="font-size: small;">the</span> Feb. 11 press release from NASA.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
"Landsat is a centerpiece of NASA's Earth Science program, and today's<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>successful launch will extend the longest continuous data record of<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Earth's surface as seen from space," said NASA Administrator Charles<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>F. Bolden<span style="font-size: small;">, himself a former astronaut and Marine Corps ge<span style="font-size: small;">neral.</span></span> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"This data is a key tool for monitoring climate change<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>and has led to the improvement of human and biodiversity health,<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>energy and water management, urban planning, disaster recovery and<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>agriculture monitoring -- all resulting in incalculable benefits to<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>the U.S. and world economy<span style="font-size: small;">," he said.</span><br />
<br />
The LDCM spacecraft separated from the rocket 79 minutes after launch<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>and the first signal was received 3 minutes later at a ground station<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>in Svalbard, Norway.<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The solar arrays<span style="font-size: small;">--which generate power for the spacecraft--</span>deployed 86<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>minutes after<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>launch. LDCM should reach its operational, sun-synchronous, polar orbit 438<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>miles (705 kilometers) above Earth within two months.<br />
<br />
After a three-month check-out phase, NASA will transfer operational control of LDCM to NASA's mission<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>partner, the Department of the Interior's U.S. Geological Survey<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>(USGS). </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">USGS will rename the satellite Landsat 8, and the organization <span style="font-size: small;">will </span>archive and distribute<span style="font-size: small;"> LCDM's data</span> free over the Internet from the Earth<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Resources and Science (EROS) center in Sioux Falls, S.D. The center should post this data <span style="font-size: small;">within</span> 100 days of launch.<br />
<br />
LDCM is the eighth in the Landsat series of satellites that have been<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>continuously observing Earth's land surfaces since 1972.<br /> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">According to the NASA press release, scien<span style="font-size: small;">tists</span> have used<span style="font-size: small;"> public Landsat data in the past </span>to detect changes over time to our planet<span style="font-size: small;">, while researchers for various firms, public and private, <span style="font-size: small;">have <span style="font-size: small;">created a myriad of <span style="font-size: small;">applications and technologies based on the Landsat information.</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
The new LDCM carries two instruments, the Operational Land Imager (OLI)<br />
and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS)<span style="font-size: small;">, that improve upon previous tech<span style="font-size: small;">nology<span style="font-size: small;">, sa<span style="font-size: small;">id</span> Jim Irons, </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">a<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>LDCM project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Greenbelt, Md.</span></span></span></span></span> <br />
<br />"LDCM is the best Landsat satellite ever built,"<span style="font-size: small;"> he said.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>
<br />
OLI will continue observations currently made by Landsat 7 in the<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>visible, near infrared, and shortwave infrared portions of the<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>electromagnetic spectrum. It also will take measurements in two new<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>bands, one to observe high-altitude cirrus clouds and another to<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>observe atmospheric aerosols as well as water quality in lakes and<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>shallow coastal waters. OLI's new design has fewer moving parts than<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>instruments on previous Landsat satellites.<br />
<br />
M<span style="font-size: small;">eanwhile </span>TIRS will collect data on heat emitted from Earth's surface in two<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>thermal bands, as compared with a single thermal band on previous<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Landsat satellites. These thermal band observations are becoming<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>increasingly vital to monitoring water consumption, especially in the<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>arid western United States.<br />
<br />
NASA's als<span style="font-size: small;">o planning to in<span style="font-size: small;">augurate <span style="font-size: small;">a</span> new SpaceX launch<span style="font-size: small;">pad </span></span></span>in 2015 with the<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>launch of the Jason-3 mission, which will precisely measure sea<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>surface height on Earth to monitor ocean circulation and sea level.<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>SpaceX is the newest American company to demonstrate the capability<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>to launch science missions for NASA and other government agencies.<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Jason-3 will be developed and operated as part of an international<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>effort led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<br />
For more information about LDCM, visit:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/landsat" target="_blank">http://www.nasa.gov/landsat</a><br />
<br />
and<br />
<br />
<a href="http://landsat.usgs.gov/" target="_blank">http://landsat.usgs.gov</a></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">What do you think? Good thing, bad thing? <span style="font-size: small;">If I'm not mistaken t</span>his is more of the satellites, remember, that can <span style="font-size: small;">see everything and everyone all the time. On the other hand, this is some seriously awesome public information <span style="font-size: small;">scientists<span style="font-size: small;"> and researchers <span style="font-size: small;">will access <span style="font-size: small;">to make awesome things. What say you?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-4432580114845830392013-02-04T21:13:00.000-08:002013-02-26T10:47:17.512-08:00West Nile Virus--The Screams, the Stops, and the Cure<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US">West
Nile Virus--when those three words hit the media your relatives
scream at flies and you itch just listening. With
</span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/20/4741835/miss-reports-17-more-cases-of.html">Mississippi</a></u></span></span><span lang="en-US">
reporting 17 more cases Aug. 20, and </span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://keranews.org/post/more-west-nile-spraying-dallas-tonight">Texas</a></u></span></span><span lang="en-US">
spraying insecticide all over Dallas, mosquito-phobia's everywhere.
Rightly so--the first 2012 </span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2012/08/onondaga_county_reports_its_fi.html">West
Nile death</a></u></span></span><span lang="en-US"> victim in New
York died this week, and </span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/index.htm">2012</a></u></span></span><span lang="en-US">
has suffered more WNV cases through August than any other year since
we first detected West Nile. How does WNV work, and how do doctors
fight it?</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US">According
to a </span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1617273/">2006
paper in the Journal of Virology,</a></u></span></span><span lang="en-US">
the virus shares the </span><span lang="en-US"><i>Flaviviradae</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
family with dengue and yellow fever. Molecules</span></span><span lang="en-US">
like its E protein help it attach to receptors on your body cells,
then open their outer membranes to fuse with them. Unlike your cells,
which have DNA and RNA, the virus only has one strand of RNA. Once it
fuses with your cells, it takes over your endoplasmic reticulum--your
cells' highway system--and makes a copies of its RNA that it wraps
using your Golgi bodies--your cell's packaging system. The cell
bursts, and these packages, virions, escape. Deadly WNV attacks the
neurons on your brain stem; you can imagine you don't want the cells
there </span><span lang="en-US"><i>bursting</i></span><span lang="en-US">.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Right now
doctors primarily treat the flu-like symptoms with rest, hydration,
and anti-inflammatories, and try to reduce pressure caused by brain
swelling. Doctors may prescribe the general anti-viral Acyclovir
before they know which virus they're dealing with, just in case the
encephalitis comes from something we CAN treat. They may prescribe
Ativan for seizures.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US">In
</span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1000453">2009
researchers</a></u></span></span><span lang="en-US"> found a possible
way to block the virus from fusing into your neurons. Their antibody,
MAb E16, blocks the chemical process on the E protein that allows the
virus to penetrate the cell membrane. There's also a possible
vaccine, as </span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22799608">researchers
just last month</a></u></span></span><span lang="en-US"> constructed
a baculovirus with WMV's E proteins. Chemicals in the bacterium
signal neighboring cells to release cytokines, or messages to the
body's defenses to rush to the rescue. That test-mouse's body now
knows next time it senses those E proteins to kill the virus, instead
of letting it fuse with its cells. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Both these
ideas still need further testing, so dump standing water, spray your
backyard, and wear repellant--remember, mosquitos like dusk AND
dawn. With the right precautions, you won't have to worry, and if
medicine keeps moving in the right direction, soon you'll have to
worry even less.</div>
<br /></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-39409509834756652202012-11-15T07:21:00.003-08:002013-03-26T07:49:47.081-07:00Chinese Wedding Foods<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="left" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
If you could time-travel--burst through some wormhole into an ancient Chinese wedding, maybe--what would you see?</div>
<div align="left" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
It
depends. China is huge--you won't find continuity across regions or
time. In Nanhui during the Qing brides sang loud lamentations, weeping
as they left their parents' houses. In older Confucian ceremonies they
rode quietly in carriages, wearing black and red to symbolize mixed
sadness and joy. Traditional weddings in modern China reflect Qing
dynasty traditions, but we're going to step even further back and look
at food you might see at early Tang or Han dynasty weddings.</div>
<div align="left" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<a href="http://www.cookingschoolinchina.com/chinese_wedding_foods.html?utm_source=11-Newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter+11&utm_medium=email">Read the rest here!</a></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-77703076593287297292012-09-14T08:45:00.002-07:002013-02-04T21:15:36.463-08:00Where did Kung Pao Chicken come from?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Gong Bao Ji or Kung Pao Chicken-thrills consumers from East and West alike with its complex spicy-and-savory flavors, smooth, hearty texture, and balanced blend of earthy colors. It's an important marker of local and international identity. <br />
<br />
<br />
Westerners associate Gong Bao firmly with China, and it remains an important symbol of the Sichuan province cooking style. Food identity doesn't happen overnight; cuisine-connoisseurs slow-cooked Gong Bao's meaning over centuries as historical attitudes and situations changed around the dish.<br />
<br />
Gong Bao Ji's hot, complicated flavors almost mimic the conflicted time period when the dish started. During the late Qing, the imperial dynasty still controlled China, but foreign forced border-openings and the opium trade generated social unrest and hatred...<br />
<br />
<em>Read the rest of the article <a href="http://www.cookingschoolinchina.com/origins_of_recipe_gong_bao_jii.html?utm_source=10-Newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter+10&utm_medium=email">here</a>.</em></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-10767750323144464822012-08-20T21:34:00.004-07:002012-08-20T21:34:53.629-07:0010,000 views<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If this were a youtube channel, I'd make a youtube video all about how wonderful my viewers are and so on and so forth.<br />
<br />
I started this blog as an attempt at dark humor. My life, I figured, always encounters failure after failure, so who better than me to write about how not to do things? The darkness was too real; I let it go because I already spend enough time depressing myself. Now, I'm better equipped to do something like that--I can actually laugh about things--and maybe I will release a few how-not-tos, but I find I only like to make fun of myself, not other people, and I haven't done anything stupid lately that's funny. So where are we?<br />
<br />
10,000 times, people have gotten information from this website. Some are
repeat-people, coming back for more, but most people come, get
something, and go. It's wide, not deep, and it means there's no way google adsense can find a target audience to make me substantial money. That's awesome. That's how not to run a blog. You're
supposed to focus on a dedicated group who returns, over and over. But
this is shot-gun-style blogging, not sniping, and we're just spraying information at everybody from all sides. <br />
<br />
We're now a vast collection of informations on everything. I truly did major in the Universe. And I'm starting to figure out what this is about.<br />
<br />
"How not to" is about trying things you're 'not' supposed to do. It's about finding a different place to market your work when you're just starting out and studying everything. It's about having a unique thesis--one you're not supposed to have--and looking in unique places for information. It's about studying bees, and Chinese unity gourds, and all those things you should know better than to put together. It's about trying something new, because it works for me to have somewhere to centralize my work. "How not to" is about stepping off the beaten path. THIS is how I live my life.<br />
<br />
And it's f-in' rad.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-82085224794540261832012-08-18T14:58:00.001-07:002012-08-20T22:06:26.664-07:00African Experiences in Latin America: Land, Amerindians, and Slavery<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
African
Experiences in Latin America: Land, Amerindians, and Slavery</div>
<div align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Europeans didn't want Amerindian land—Africans did, and
Amerindians shaped African slavery.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-US" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
No statement in Latin American Historical Studies contains more
shock value—or hidden truths—than this, so with this begins the
discussion. To slice through the confusing and often contradictory
muddle of Spanish cultural prejudice requires a cutting statement,
for the question--what created the hybrid cultures
of modern Latin America--bears a thick skin. The secret to
understanding begins with land. Cultural hybridization depended
largely on European intentions towards land because those intentions
affected the way Europeans saw Amerindian peoples. That vision
affected European treatment of Africans, resulting in the brutal and
unique slavery system that remains the most important non-human factor
responsible for the success of African culture in
Latin America. Amerindians also directly affected African cultural
survival through interactions both during slavery and conquest.</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> Spanish
nonchalance towards land affected treatment of Amerindians,
ultimately altering the treatment of Africans. The Spanish explorers
wanted wealth that they depended on the Spanish crown to legitimize,
and the Spanish crown wanted to expand its empire: this required the
addition of new citizens, not an influx of land. The encomienda
system and the later repartimiento system both focused on the
exploitation of the people, not the land, which the Spaniards
depended on the Amerindian people to operate. In the encomiendo,
each encomendero received a grant for certain kinship groups of
people or ayllus;</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
in the repartimiento the colonist received a set number of healthy
males or “tributaries”, and their immediate families.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Because the Spaniards wanted people to rule, not a place to use,
they depended heavily on native institutions. The mita labor system
in Peru, for example, came originally from the conquered Incan
empire.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Similarly, when in contact with settled agricultural peoples, the
Portuguese “created a fiscal system based on villages of
'surrendered' or conquered Native Americans.”</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote4sym" name="sdfootnote4anc"><sup>4</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Thus, while Amerindians received awful treatment as second-class
citizens, they were not legally slaves. From the very beginnings of
the conquest, when Cortez's men gazed down at Tenochtitlan, they
lauded its technological developments as evidence that these people
could belong in the Spanish empire.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote5sym" name="sdfootnote5anc"><sup>5</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Unlike the European settler families of North America, the single
(or effectively single) male conquistadors did not need to displace
all the Amerindians for land.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> This
view of Amerindian peoples as people, so necessary to the expansion
of the Crown's power, added fuel to the continual struggles between
the Crown, the Church, and settlers. Each of the three groups of
elites, as they tried to expand their power, would accuse the other
two of mistreating the Amerindian peoples.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote6sym" name="sdfootnote6anc"><sup>6</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
The Church, compelled by the desire to establish the new perfect
church in the New World, had priests such as Bartolomeo de las Casas</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote7sym" name="sdfootnote7anc"><sup>7</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
and Lorenzo de Bienvenida</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote8sym" name="sdfootnote8anc"><sup>8</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
who claimed that innocent Amerindians suffered at settlers' hands.
The State and settlers struggled against the church in the Yucatan to
limit the power of Inquisitorial priests.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote9sym" name="sdfootnote9anc"><sup>9</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Finally, the State restricted how the settlers could exploit the
Amerindians under their jurisdiction, requiring separate settlements
and fair wages of some kind.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote10sym" name="sdfootnote10anc"><sup>10</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Without Amerindians, the church could not find new converts, the
State had no one to rule and the settlers had no source of income,</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote11sym" name="sdfootnote11anc"><sup>11</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
so all three groups found humane treatment of Amerindians to their
advantage. These continual struggles gave the Amerindians the
opportunity to pit the three sides against each other, and Spanish
dependence on native peoples and their institutions allowed
Amerindians to hold on to their culture.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> Thus
the Spanish desire to rule people, not land, made Amerindian slavery
difficult and finally illegal, opening the door to African slavery.
Africans had higher resistance to European diseases because of early
livestock domestication on the African continent, they usually had
useful “modern” skill sets for agriculture and iron trade, their
unfamiliarity with the landscape kept them near or at least
moderately dependent on settlements, and, unlike the Amerindians,
they had not had rigorous Christianization and the church would not
defend them.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote12sym" name="sdfootnote12anc"><sup>12</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Most importantly, they came from outside Latin America: they did not
need to have rights like the original inhabitants of the land did in
order to maintain the illusion of an empire. African slavery took a
particularly strong foothold in New World areas populated by
migratory tribes such as the chichimec. These tribes not have highly
controlling social institutions and political institutions such as
those of the Incas or Aztecs upon which the conquistadors so
rigorously depended, and in many places, the nomadic militant
lifestyles of these people groups made them accustomed to fighting
and living in impassable areas, rendering them difficult to subdue.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote13sym" name="sdfootnote13anc"><sup>13</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Hence, in these areas African slavery posed an especially enticing
alternative from the point of view of colonialists, and the nations
in South America with the highest black proportions of the population
today include Brazil and Haiti, whose native populations either did
not exist or simply disappeared into the interior. The vacuum for
mass labor created by Amerindian rights thus birthed the unique
African plantation slavery.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> The
unique style of plantation slavery in South America in name actively
opposed the survival of African culture, but inadvertently forced its
survival through two land-related phenomena: the long life of the
slave trade, the Catholic tradition of a Sunday. These remain
unintentional factors, of course, for certainly no one in Brazil or
Haiti wanted an influx of African culture: Latin American masters
made a deliberate effort to split up different linguistic and ethnic
groups in order to prevent rebellions.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote14sym" name="sdfootnote14anc"><sup>14</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Yet because European ignorance of African languages and cultures
diminished their ability to differentiate between them, cultural
dilution did not really succeed: one African leader found and bought
back his entire tribe.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote15sym" name="sdfootnote15anc"><sup>15</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Additionally, no matter how one mixed the tribes, most of the people
in one ship would at least come from the same trade network or
geographical area, and Thornton argues that within that network
ethnic diversity did not play such a dividing role as one might
imagine.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote16sym" name="sdfootnote16anc"><sup>16</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Despite their failure, slavery's intentional agents certainly tried
to eliminate or at least limit African culture, if not through
relocation and dilution, then through overwork.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> Overwork
and other elements of brutality resulted from the late abolition of
the slave trade in South America, specifically in Brazil. First of
all, the longevity of the slave trade in Brazil made brutality more
economically feasible; in Brazil plantation owners made the
calculations that working slaves to death and shipping in more would
cost less than trying to care for and breed them. The life expectancy
on sugar plantations remained at 23 years, with 88% mortality on some
coffee plantations.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote17sym" name="sdfootnote17anc"><sup>17</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
In North America, on the other hand, once the slave trade became
abolished, plantation owners had to ensure slave health remained at
least sufficient for breeding. Brutality drives people to extremes;
when escape provides more hazards than slavery, slaves tend to remain
slaves, but when, as in Brazil, the dangers of escape no longer
outweigh the dangers of slavery, flight becomes more feasible. The
extra brutality of the slave trade encouraged more aggressive
resistance, making slaves more prone to cling to their own culture or
even to found new societies based on their own norms.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> Furthermore,
because the slave trade lasted such a long time Brazillians could
predominantly import male slaves.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote18sym" name="sdfootnote18anc"><sup>18</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Thus the inherent uselessness plantation owners associated with older
slaves, children and even women allowed for inflated rates of
manumission</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote19sym" name="sdfootnote19anc"><sup>19</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
as compared to the North American experience in which masters needed
women, the elderly, and especially children to continue the slave
line and maintain slave dependency. Additionally, these single male
slaves had few ties to the plantation and could more easily flee from
slavery or bargain for more land without too much to lose, whereas in
North America, family ties would keep slaves dependent on their
masters for several generations, diluting their cultural heritage
with slave life. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> The
longevity of the slave trade also accidentally encouraged runaways
because of the frequency with which new Africans arrived. Throughout
the New World, African-born slaves tended to run away more
frequently,</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote20sym" name="sdfootnote20anc"><sup>20</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
so in Latin America, where most slaves came from import, instances of
runaways remained common enough to promote the establishment of
actual runaway communities, something unheard of in the US.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote21sym" name="sdfootnote21anc"><sup>21</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
The threat of running away to a slave or even Amerindian community
thus became so significant that slaves even began to have the power
to negotiate their treatment.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote22sym" name="sdfootnote22anc"><sup>22</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
This power, also unheard of in North America, contributed to the
sense of self-sufficiency that gave Africans a firm grip on their
cultural pride.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> This essential self-sufficiency also arose in
Latin America, especially in Brazil, because the economic
calculations made possible by the continuation of the slave trade
convinced masters not to provide basic necessities for their
laborers. Instead of providing them with food or clothing, masters
found it cheaper to provide slaves with a plot of land. This plot of
land, and its expansion, often stood at the top of the slaves' lists
of demands from their masters,</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote23sym" name="sdfootnote23anc"><sup>23</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
and its cultivation allowed slaves to maintain a sense of
self-sufficiency. Interestingly, one notes that in modern Venezuela,
where during the colonial period owners provided for their slaves'
every need, African culture does not play as large a role as it does
now in Brazil, where colonial slaves only received that all-important
plot of land. As Thornton points out, providing for most or all of
the slaves' necessities leaves them “deprived of all sense of
self-sufficiency and community feeling.”</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote24sym" name="sdfootnote24anc"><sup>24</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
On their land, Africans grew African crops such as rice, and their
experience with agriculture caused them to so excel that some local
economies actually depended heavily on the surplus sold by African
slaves for survival.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote25sym" name="sdfootnote25anc"><sup>25</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
That land helped maintain African culture in three ways, then: it
maintained that sense of self-sufficiency that strengthens cultural
pride, it gave them a space to practice their African heritage, and
it made the local freed people dependent on them, forcing them to at
least practically accept the value in an African lifestyle. The same
land that in the minds of the original conquistadors had little value
compared to the riches produced by Amerindian peoples had infinite
value to the Africans, and it became theirs because of the longevity
of the slave trade.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> Catholic
intervention, or the lack thereof, similarly provided Africans with a
space to celebrate their culture. While masters rarely brought
priests onto the plantation and made little effort to give religious
instruction to their slaves, they did not try to halt or limit
religious expansion as they did in North America.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote26sym" name="sdfootnote26anc"><sup>26</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Whereas in North America church organization came under suspicion
because of the solidarity it provided, and ultimately reading the
Bible became illegal for a slave,</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote27sym" name="sdfootnote27anc"><sup>27</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
in Latin America lay brotherhoods dedicated to particular saints
merged with new nations that had elections of kings and queens in
public.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote28sym" name="sdfootnote28anc"><sup>28</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Priests would even help to organize these brotherhoods of Africans
to ease their transition to Christianity, and the Africans would then
worship in their own native languages.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote29sym" name="sdfootnote29anc"><sup>29</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
Language, so crucial to the maintenance of African culture, was not
the only cultural artifact to find refuge in the Catholic church.
These organizations also presented slaves with the opportunity to
practice their material culture in aesthetic expressions such as
pottery or decorative textile and to worship with African dances and
music.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote30sym" name="sdfootnote30anc"><sup>30</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
In this way the power of the church--and the ingenuity of the African
slaves who used it--sheltered African culture.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> Catholicism
also furthered African culture through the practice of the Sabbath.
The church had enough control over Latin American society to prevent
anyone from working their slaves on Sunday, and of course the many
slaves owned by the church could not work either.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote31sym" name="sdfootnote31anc"><sup>31</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
This Sunday off gave slaves the opportunity to work on their
all-important land, and while eking out an existence posed nearly
insurmountable difficulty, some Africans even earned enough from
their fields to buy their own freedom. The Sunday off also set a
precedent for Africans to request additional days off, such as Friday
and Saturday.</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote32sym" name="sdfootnote32anc"><sup>32</sup></a></span></sup></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-US"> While
the ultimate responsibility for the longevity of African culture goes
to the perseverence of the Africans themselves, these two fundamental
attributes of plantation slavery—the longevity of the slave trade
and the Catholic intervention—played a heavy role in seeping
African culture into Latin America today. However, Amerindians did
not only affect Africans by creating the slave-labor-vacuum into
which Africans fell. Their struggles to maintain their own cultural
heritage sometimes competed with African subsistence, as sometimes
Amerindians would enslave Africans or use them as bargaining chips to
gain freedoms from conquistadors. On the other hand, sometimes
Amerindians directly helped Africans establish their own communities.
As mentioned before, Africans could flee to Amerindian communities,</span><sup><span lang="en-US"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote33sym" name="sdfootnote33anc"><sup>33</sup></a></span></sup><span lang="en-US">
creating a unique opportunity for cultural blending that surely
contributed to the mindset with which modern Latin Americans view
their mixed heritage. Thornton describes Amerindian relations with
Africans thusly: </span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.26cm; margin-right: 1.57cm; text-indent: -0.03cm;">
“<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Runaways
seeking aid in the native societies did not always find a good
reception. Native American attitudes towards helping runaway slaves
depended on many factors, including the structures of the Native
American societies themselves, their relations with the Europeans,
and the goals of their leaders. Sometimes these converged to help
runaways; sometimes they contributed to the destruction of runaway
communities or to runaways being returned to their masters.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">”</span></span></span><sup><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote34sym" name="sdfootnote34anc"><sup>34</sup></a></span></span></span></sup></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 1.57cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">European attitudes towards Amerindians, then, were not
alone in shaping how African culture would survive in the New World:
Amerindian attitudes towards Africans also played a significant role.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 1.57cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Those
Amerindian attitudes had some root in the African role in the
conquest. A 1539 play pitted African actors, led by a black king and
queen, against Amerindian actors representing primitive wildmen. As
Matthew Restall explains, certainly this would have reminded
Amerindians of African roles in the conquest, and would have fired up
African pride at the often over-looked military prowess of real-life
dark-skinned conquistadors. Significantly, the play also would have
hearkened back to the rebel black king executed in Mexico city only a
few years earlier.</span></span></span><sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote35sym" name="sdfootnote35anc"><sup>35</sup></a></span></span></span></sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
Because many Amerindian groups supported the European conquest
against other groups, some Amerindians at least would have seen black
rebels as disrupting a desirable status quo. Amerindians viewed
Africans sometimes as allies against Europeans and sometimes as
conquistadors, but always as foreigners. Amerindians who lived as
second-class citizens after the Toledo reforms would most likely have
resented zealous black conquistadors such as Juan Valiente just like
they resented any other conquistador; his rise to encomendero</span></span></span><sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote36sym" name="sdfootnote36anc"><sup>36</sup></a></span></span></span></sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
despite enslavement by Europeans would not likely have elicited much
sympathy from them. The rare black encomendero would not have been
the only bad memory Amerindians had of black conquest: early European
expeditions only included dozens of Africans, but later conquests
featured entire armies of American-born African soldiers, trained by
Europeans to put down Amerindian revolts and to conquer new
territories.</span></span></span><sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote37sym" name="sdfootnote37anc"><sup>37</sup></a>
</span></span></span></sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
Amerindians opposing Europeans would never have forgotten the
hundreds of Africans bearing down on them alongside sometimes merely
dozens of whites. Small wonder, then, that Amerindians did not always
view Africans as allies against European infarction.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 1.57cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"> The
African role in the conquest shaped opportunities for later African
slaves by helping to create a mixed society in which runaways could
hide and creoles could bargain. Because the conquistador mercenary
armies made up of unmarried or effectively single men often resulted
in sexual alliances, forced or un-forced with Amerindians and slaves,
the average Latin American did not look European, but rather mixed
African or mixed Amerindian. By contrast, North America became
largely settled, with the exception of colonies like Virginia, by
migrating families or groups that had little interest in forming such
liaisons, resulting in a very different demarcation of race later on
in the history of slavery. A person classified as black in North
America could in that day easily find herself labelled white in
Brazil.</span></span></span><sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote38sym" name="sdfootnote38anc"><sup>38</sup></a></span></span></span></sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
This does not mean that Brazil had a more benign system of slavery
than the US, or less racism; merely that racism became differently
defined, because of the conquest, so that an escaped slave or
manumitted African could more easily blend into society</span></span></span><sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote39sym" name="sdfootnote39anc"><sup>39</sup></a></span></span></span></sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
and maintain their cultural practices.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" class="western" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 1.57cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> Europeans did not want Amerindian land, but Africans
did. The shocking statement still stands, then, not to claim that
Africans sailed over to take Amerindian lands, but to explain how
Europeans' desire to control Amerindian peoples, not land, caused a
slave-labor vacuum that brought African slavery, marked by late
abolition of the slave trade and heavy church involvement, into the
forefront of Latin American society. African culture survived in
large part because of land, which slaves bargained dearly for, and
Amerindian interactions sometimes helped and sometimes inhibited the
progression of African culture in Latin America, in part influenced
by the legacy of African involvement in the conquest. The tendency
to focus on European-African or European-Amerindian interactions
downplays the important effects Amerindians and Africans had on each
other, and in order to understand modern Latin American culture all
the variables must lay out on the table. The analysis of
Amerindian-African interactions shows how actively both parties
shaped modern Latin American culture and demonstrates that involved
actors, not passive survivors of European conquest, claim
responsibility for history. History, like life, requires more than
survival victims; it requires protagonists.</span></div>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>Stern,
Steve J. “Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish
Conquest.” (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 27</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>Ibid.,
81</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote3">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym">3</a>Ibid.,
82</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote4">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote4anc" name="sdfootnote4sym">4</a>Thornton,
John. “<i>Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World,
1400-1800” </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998)</span> 133</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote5">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote5anc" name="sdfootnote5sym">5</a>Lecture,
8/25/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote6">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote6anc" name="sdfootnote6sym">6</a>Lecture,
10/27/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote7">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote7anc" name="sdfootnote7sym">7</a>Lecture,
9/20/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote8">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote8anc" name="sdfootnote8sym">8</a>Clendinnen,
Inga. <i>“Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan,
1517-1570”</i> (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 52</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote9">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote9anc" name="sdfootnote9sym">9</a>Ibid.,
82-83</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote10">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote10anc" name="sdfootnote10sym">10</a>Thornton.<span style="font-style: normal;">
132</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote11">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote11anc" name="sdfootnote11sym">11</a>Lecture,
9/20/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote12">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote12anc" name="sdfootnote12sym">12</a>Ibid.</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote13">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote13anc" name="sdfootnote13sym">13</a>Lecture,
11/10/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote14">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote14anc" name="sdfootnote14sym">14</a>Thornton,
195. Lecture, 11/15/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote15">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote15anc" name="sdfootnote15sym">15</a>Lecture,
11/17/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote16">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote16anc" name="sdfootnote16sym">16</a>Thornton,
191</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote17">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote17anc" name="sdfootnote17sym">17</a>Lecture,
11/15/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote18">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote18anc" name="sdfootnote18sym">18</a>Ibid.</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote19">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote19anc" name="sdfootnote19sym">19</a>Lecture,
11/17/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote20">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote20anc" name="sdfootnote20sym">20</a>Thornton,
280</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote21">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote21anc" name="sdfootnote21sym">21</a>Lecture,
11/22/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote22">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote22anc" name="sdfootnote22sym">22</a>Thornton,
283</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote23">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote23anc" name="sdfootnote23sym">23</a>Lecture,
11/22/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote24">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote24anc" name="sdfootnote24sym">24</a>Thornton,
168</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote25">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote25anc" name="sdfootnote25sym">25</a>Lecture,
11/22/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote26">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote26anc" name="sdfootnote26sym">26</a>Lecture,
11/17/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote27">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote27anc" name="sdfootnote27sym">27</a>Thornton,
330</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote28">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote28anc" name="sdfootnote28sym">28</a>Thornton,
220</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote29">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote29anc" name="sdfootnote29sym">29</a>Lecture,
11/17/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote30">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote30anc" name="sdfootnote30sym">30</a>Thornton,
224</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote31">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote31anc" name="sdfootnote31sym">31</a>Lecture,
11/17/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote32">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote32anc" name="sdfootnote32sym">32</a>Lecture,
11/22/10</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote33">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote33anc" name="sdfootnote33sym">33</a>Thornton,
283</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote34">
<div class="sdfootnote-western">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote34anc" name="sdfootnote34sym">34</a>Thornton,
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<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote35anc" name="sdfootnote35sym">35</a>Matthew
Restall, <i>Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 52</span></div>
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<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote36anc" name="sdfootnote36sym">36</a>Restall,
53</div>
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<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote37anc" name="sdfootnote37sym">37</a>Restall,
56</div>
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<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote38anc" name="sdfootnote38sym">38</a>Lecture,
11/15/10</div>
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<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4004996308159514746#sdfootnote39anc" name="sdfootnote39sym">39</a>Lecture,
11/22/10</div>
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Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-15410711066910340042012-08-15T05:14:00.001-07:002012-08-20T22:06:26.569-07:00Suspicion About Oil Treaty in Sudan--And Continued Human Rights Violations<style type="text/css"> <!--
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Can Sudanese Oil Agreement Stand Up Against Continued Human Rights Violations?</div>
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African-based humanitarians expressed skepticism today that the recent oil agreement between northern and southern countries of Sudan can survive the continued human rights and security debate in Sudan. </div>
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"We are glad to hear of the apparent oil compromise between the North and South of Sudan. However, working on the track record of the last 57 years, it is highly unlikely that the Arab North will stick to their side of the Agreement for long," said Dr. Peter Hammond, founder of Frontline Fellowship, an African humanitarian organization in the region. </div>
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"There have been many promises that they have consistently broken," said Hammond. </div>
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Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton, who visited Juba August 3 to encourage the two parties to re-initiate trade, said she welcomes the new oil agreement. "We praise the courage of the Republic of South Sudan's leadership in taking this decision. As I said in Juba yesterday, the interests of their people were at stake." </div>
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However, violence stemming from race and extremist jihad still continues as before, particularly in areas that the predominantly Arab-descended northern Sudan will not relinquish to the culturally black-African south, Hammond said. </div>
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Islamists of Arab descent routinely attack black African Christians in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, which, although culturally part of the South, was not included in the redrawing of the maps, said Hammond. </div>
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"Ethnic cleansing in the Nuba Mountains has been carried out," he said. "Many tens-of-thousands of civilians in the Nuba Mountains have been displaced fleeing the bombardments and terror attacks." </div>
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The northern Sudan Air Force has bombed ethnic Nuba churches and Bible colleges for religious motivations, said Hammond: "The Nuba continued to be targeted by deadly airstrikes and ground attacks by Muslim militia shouting Allah Akbar." </div>
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Many black Nubians have accused UN-sponsored Egyptian peace keepers of bias towards their Arab-descended tormentors, claiming the peace keepers were complicit in targeted assassination within UN displaced camps, he said. </div>
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The black population of the Blue Nile Province, while mostly Muslim, also suffer violence as they seek to resist northern Arab control, he said. </div>
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Clinton encouraged the northern country of Sudan to come to an agreement on humanitarian access to disputed territories including Kordofan and the Blue Nile, she said. </div>
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"If Sudan would now also take the steps to peace in Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile, and Darfur, and if it will respect the rights of all citizens, it can likewise give its people a brighter future," she said. </div>
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International pressure may make a difference, said Hammond: the Sudanese government allowed the vote that led to Southern Independence Day on July 9, 2011, partly because of incentives from the US government, including removal from its list of State Sponsors of Terrorism and the lifting of economic sanctions. </div>
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Domestically, the local protests that led to the new oil compromise might help end some attacks. </div>
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"The Khartoum government is under increasing pressure from protests from their own population in the North which has compelled them into backing off from the threatened conflict against the South – for now," said Hammond. </div>
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However, Hammond, who has experienced first-hand air-strikes, infantry attacks, and death-threats from the northern government, also doubts the new oil compromise because of a similar compromise in 2005 in which the north never paid the south for oil, he said. </div>
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"One can say that the military attacks are mostly to do with oil. Most of the oil is in the South, and yet the North will not relinquish these areas," he said. </div>
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Hammond explained that the disputed oil rich Abyei region was meant to have a separate Referendum on whether to join the South, or North, but because of violent clashes, the Referendum in this region was indefinitely postponed. </div>
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"The tensions in the border regions were aggravated from the North’s unwillingness to allow voting in the oil rich areas," he said. "Some critical areas in the CPA remained unresolved, such as the final status of the oil rich Abyei Province, which was continually afflicted by violence from the North." </div>
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Noel Stringham, a UVA researcher studying the region, said the government of South Sudan needs this oil agreement in order to continue development in the country. </div>
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"The government of South Sudan will be completely broke unless they make peace with Sudan and resume exporting oil or they get a lot of foreign loans by using their oil reserves as leverage," she said. </div>
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"The Chinese--who desperately want that oil back online--would probably eventually contribute to a new pipeline if they became convinced that the two Sudans could never resolve their differences," she said. </div>
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"That said 'development' in South Sudan is not the same as a government that can write checks," she said. </div>
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Stringham said if military conflict continues, South Sudan does have the ability to engage and possibly even triumph over its northern neighbor. </div>
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"If you want proof just look at how easily they captured Heglig/Panthou (depending on who you believe has a right to the land) from Sudan in April and how quickly they pulled out after Obama and Ban Ki-Moon called up Salva Kiir and told him to retreat," she said. </div>
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"Basically the military of Sudan is actually very overstretched right now because the new alliance between the Darfur rebels and the SPLA-N--the old allies of the Southern government who live north of the contested border area--has really bogged them down," she said. </div>
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Hammond said he agrees: "If the North could not defeat South Sudan when they were rag-tag rebels in the bush with no outside aid, South Sudan is now in an immeasurably better position." </div>
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"I would say the North has no chance of defeating South Sudan as an independent neighbor," he said. </div>
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"However, many innocent people will suffer before this conflict is brought to an end."
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Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-7243199420893864752012-08-15T05:12:00.000-07:002012-08-20T22:06:26.642-07:00"Muslims for America" leader speaks on abortion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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An American Muslim leader praised Congress August 4th for striking down the D.C. Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act last week, while pro-life/pro-choice activists continue debating the bill's purpose.<br />
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"I agree with the emotions of the Congressmen who started the bill, but I do not believe they should have brought it before Congress, and I do not believe that Congress should have voted on it," said Seeme Hasan, co-founder of Muslims for America.<br />
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"That's up to each woman--her choice, her religion, her faith--different people view things differently," she said.<br />
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Cecile Richards, President of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a July 31st statement that the bill would have made it nearly impossible for a woman to get an abortion in D.C.<br />
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"As the nation’s leading advocate for women’s health care, Planned Parenthood Action Fund denounces H.R. 3803, a bill that would have banned abortion in the District of Columbia," she said.<br />
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According to the actual language of the bill, abortion would have remained legal in D.C., except for one exemption: "abortion shall not be performed or attempted, if the probable post-fertilization age, as determined under paragraph (1), of the unborn child is 20 weeks or greater."<br />
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that just <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm">1.4 percent of abortions</a> occur at 21 weeks or more, according to a November, 2006 abortion surveillance survey.<br />
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Richards also said the bill also did not contain necessary health exemptions for the mother: "It would have prevented a woman from ending her pregnancy regardless of the threat to her health."<br />
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However, the language of the bill said the restriction on abortion "does not apply if, in reasonable medical judgment, the abortion is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, but not including psychological or emotional conditions."<br />
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The bill also unfairly targets doctors, said Richards.<br />
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"It also would have subjected doctors to harsh criminal penalties for performing abortions."<br />
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According to the bill, doctors performing abortions on pain-capable fetuses could not be imprisoned for more than two years.<br />
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Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the feminist Susan B. Anthony List, said in an August 2 e-mail that she and her group are extremely disappointed that Congress could not agree on banning abortion only for the pain-capable unborn.<br />
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"As you may know by now, sadly and shockingly 156 Members of Congress voted against the D.C. Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act -- a bill that protects unborn children capable of feeling pain from the excruciating torment of an abortionist's instruments. These are abortions on children past 20 weeks of gestation," said Dannenfelser.<br />
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Pain receptors first develop at 7 weeks and diffuse throughout the body by 14 weeks, according to a 2004 paper on fetal endoscopic surgery by Myers et. al published in Best Practice & Research in Clinical Anaesthesiology.<br />
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"The first essential requirement for nociception is the presence of sensory receptors, which develop first in the perioral area at around 7 weeks gestation. From here, they develop in the rest of the face and in the palmar surfaces of the hands and soles of the feet from 11 weeks. By 20 weeks, they are present through all the skin and mucosal surfaces," according to another 2008 paper by Brusseau et al published in the International Anesthesiology Clinics.<br />
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Those nerves link to the thalamus, the brain's pain control center, by no later than 20 weeks, according to another paper by Sheltema et al published in Fetal and Maternal Medicine Review.<br />
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Response to painful stimuli occurs from 22 weeks gestation, or 20 weeks post-fertilization, according to another 2008 paper by Gupta et al published in Continuing Education in Anaesthesia, Critical Care, & Pain.<br />
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Hasan said that her religious beliefs do not necessarily coincide with her political beliefs against H.R. 3803: not only does she believe the fetus feels pain after 20 weeks, but she believes abortion is wrong after four months.<br />
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"After sixteen weeks the Q'ran says that the angel has breathed life into the fetus. So I look at it at that point, according to my religion, the fetus is a person. So I personally would have a very difficult time at that point having an abortion," she said.<br />
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"If you do an abortion after that point, you are really taking a human life," she said.<br />
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She said that an abortion after four months will weigh heavily on a woman's conscious, and Congress should make an effort to require education on fetal development for women considering abortions.<br />
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American adults favor, by a 3-to-1 margin, a policy of not permitting abortion anywhere “after the point where substantial medical evidence says that the unborn child can feel pain,” unless it is “necessary to save a mother’s life," according to a nationwide telephone poll of 1,010 adults (MOE +/-3.1%), conducted July 12-15, by The Polling Company, Inc./WomanTrend.
70% of women, 55% of men, and 63% of all adults said that after the point of pain, abortion should not be permitted, according to the poll.
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Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-6824745966971527652012-04-09T07:20:00.000-07:002012-08-20T22:06:26.633-07:00NY attorney says battle over traffic-ticket strip searches not over yetDaily Caller Article<br />
By Jen Veldhuyzen<br />
@petrepan<br />
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The Supreme Court struck down a complaint April 2 from a man subjected to invasive strip searches for an unpaid traffic fine.<br />
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But despite the setback from America’s highest judicial authority, his attorney said Wednesday that she may file a petition for a re-hearing. The battle, attorney Susan C. Lask told The Daily Caller, is not over yet.<br />
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“This is about non-criminal offenders, and protecting their rights. It’s about the grandmother with the broken tail-light not getting pulled in and searched,” she said. “Even if it’s 10 percent, or just a thousand people a year, or 200 people — these people should not be treated inhumanely like that.”<br />
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“After this ruling, get ready to strip even if you have an unpaid traffic ticket,” Libertarian Party chairman Mark Hinkle said in a statement. “We are dismayed. This ruling sanctions new and unprecedented levels of invasion of privacy.”<br />
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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/05/ny-attorney-says-battle-over-traffic-ticket-strip-searches-not-over-yet/#ixzz1rYL04xQbPetre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-10985656875161283562012-03-15T07:17:00.000-07:002012-03-15T07:17:25.895-07:00How Not to Stay on Topic: Fiction, News, and FeelingsAnother blog post for another day! I realized today, what with my writing fiction so much and all, that I really ought to have a blog for writing fiction. Or writing about fiction. But I think it's so pretentious to pretend (wow) that I have wonderful great advice for people on that--while I do know a little more about the publishing process than the average grunt, I'm still...well, the average grunt. So I guess that's why I don't have THAT going on. Although, I suppose, pretending to know everything about writing fiction might be a great HOW NOT TO exercise. BUT I am considering doing little flash fiction bits every now and again if you like. Just for you, you know. Only considering.<br />
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I know, all of you who visit this blog visit for the news and the facts. Because yes, news and facts are pretty dang awesome. And I know it's been a while. Don't worry! You've got some African History coming your way shortly, and I may do a quick little "this week in Paraguay" for you as well. Because, yannow, news. Know your audience, and all that. But this is the how NOT to blog. I am allowed to NOT know my audience. To pretend that you're all thirteen-year-old girls who like to listen to me ramble. <br />
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In other things, there's a ring with a diamond on it--and it's on my finger. I always thought I wasn't the type. I guess I'm still not, considering that one of my first thoughts that I remember afterwards was, "dude, this is diamond. Hardest material on earth. I could like, go smash in windows and stuff!" <br />
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Speaking of how not to (I wasn't)--I know I've gotten like 8000 views over the past few months. Do any of you 500 viewers from last month have any...comments on layout improvement? I was planning on keeping the sucky layout, because, yannow, HOW NOT TO. But it's kinda hurting my eyes. Should I? Should I not?Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004996308159514746.post-2910325490278563392012-03-10T12:34:00.000-08:002012-03-10T12:34:08.084-08:00Random Kind Comments on Youtube--You have the power (of Greyskull)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
If, instead of posting critical things, all several thousand of you posted three kind comments on three youtube videos every day, we could brighten several thousand days for several thousand people.<br />
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That's pretty sweet.<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Wb1WJLjLaxM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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</div>Petre Panhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09116806277306186024noreply@blogger.com0