Remembering Harriet Tubman

With thanks to Kate Clifford Lawson, author of Bound For The Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, and the related website, HarrietTubmanBiography.com, we note that this year, the Jewish new year coincides with the anniversary of Tubman’s first escape from slavery. We’d like to point out some of her accomplishments which we suspect are not common knowledge:

  • Not content with securing her own freedom, she made thirteen trips into the South to rescue imprisoned family members, each time placing herself in harm’s way;
  • Made other trips, unnumbered, helping others enslaved escape;
  • Gathered intelligence for the Union Army;
  • Was the first woman to lead Union forces in an attack on Confederate forces.
  • And all this with a childhood head injury inflicted by a slave overseer leaving her suffering chronic head pain, seizures, and difficulty sleeping.

Disenfranchised as a woman, an African-American, a slave, burdened by disability, Harriet Tubman nonetheless redefined herself, repeatedly risking her life to save others, and perhaps helping to redeem our country from the moral taint of slavery. Our words here can do nothing to add to those accomplishments; but it is within our reach to honor her memory.

In that spirit, regardless of calendar or faith, please accept our wishes for a just, peaceful and prosperous year to come.

Gore & The Supreme Court

US Supreme Court, 2000

In the Election of 2000, Al Gore won the “Popular Vote” 50,999,897 to 50,456,002, 48.38% to 47.87%, by a margin of 543,895, or 0.51% of the vote. However, he lost Florida by 547 votes. Consequently Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes were awarded to Bush and Gore lost the election in the Electoral College 271 to 266 – by five votes. Had he won Florida votes he would also have won the Electoral College Vote, but the Supreme Court intervened, ruled that there was no time for a recount, (see wikipedia entry, here) therefore George W. Bush had won in Florida, and that Mr. Bush, therefore, was elected President by the Electoral College. But what if Gore had won a decisive majority in the Electoral College? What if our elections were determined by the popular vote? What if the election of 2000 had been called for Gore?  (Source: Federal Election Commission, FEC, Presidential Election, 2000, Official Results.

What kind of jurists would a President Gore have appointed to the Supreme Court?

Presidents tend to appoint justices who agree with them on political philosophy. Notable exceptions were Warren Burger, appointed by President Eisenhower, and David Souter, appointed by President G. H. W. Bush.

George W Bush appointed Samuel Alito and John Roberts, to the Supreme Court. These men typically join with Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, and they typically find in favor of corporations and the government rather than individual citizens.

Bill Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. They typically find in favor over individuals rather than corporations or the government. Barack Obama appointed Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, who typically agree with Breyer and Ginsburg. Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor have occasionally forged majorities with Kennedy and Roberts.

As President, Al Gore would have probably have appointed jurists like Kagan and Sotomayor who tend to find in agreement with Ginsburg and Breyer. He might have appointed Bill Clinton to the Supreme Court. He probably would have appointed justices with a comprehensive understanding of environmental law and the reasons why we need tough protections on the environment.

We saw these patterns in the decisions on Citizens United and Florence v Burlington, described by me as “Landmark Mistakes of the Supreme Court” (here). These were decided by Chief Justice Roberts, and Associate Justices Alito, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas in the majority and Associate Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor in the minority.  The decision on the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” was made by Chief Justice Roberts, with Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor.

Justices appointed by a President Gore would probably have found in favor of Albert Florence, in Florence v Burlington, that the Fourth Amendment should be understood to bar strip-searches of people arrested for minor offenses not involving drugs or violence, unless officials had a reasonable suspicion that they were carrying contraband. In Citizens United, they probably would have found that citizens and groups may not spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcome of elections.

The practical implications those rulings – that police, after reading an apprehended suspect his or her rights in accord with the Miranda decision, can strip-search him or her, and that anyone and corporations can spend unlimited amounts to influence the outcome of elections, suggest that the (human) Citizens of the Republic would be better served with one or two more Justices who would tend to rule in favor of the rights and liberties of (human) citizens rather than the powers of corporations and the state.

In the recent decision on the Affordable Care Act, aka, “ObamaCare” judges appointed by a President Gore might have found, like Chief Justice Roberts, the law Constitutional under the taxing provision of the Constitution. On the other hand, they might have ruled that the laws establishing Medicare for Seniors, Medicaid for the poor, and the Veterans Health Administration must be expanded, because they are discriminatory against non-veterans who do not qualify for Medicare and Medicaid, and that these programs must be combined to create a “Citizens Health Administration” or “Medicare for All,” which would guarantee all Americans access to basic medical care.
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Neither Presidents Clinton, Bush, or Obama, or any of the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were reached in the preparation of this post.  Observations by current or former Presidents, Justices of the Supreme Court or justices in other courts would be welcome.

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As an analyst with Popular Logistics, I am available for research and analysis on a per project or a per diem basis. I can be reached at ‘L Furman 97” @ G Mail . com.
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Texas May Make Basic Health Care for Women A Rare Commodity.

Adenocarcinoma found via Pap test. Pap “stain” is what provides the color (and thereby the coloration and visibility) in this slide.

There’s a proposal pending in Texas which would effectively decertify Planned Parenthood as a Medicaid provider. Andrea Grimes, an investigative reporter who writes about reproductive and women’s health issues at RHRealityCheck, made inquiries as to the actual availability of health care to women on Medicaid in the Austin area.

Grimes used as her criterion the Pap smear, which should be a routine test for adult women (at intervals of three years for those at least risk, more frequently if other risk indicators are present). Among other things, a Pap smear can be the first indication of cancer. In other words, it’s a basic service. A provider of women’s health services who isn’t providing Pap smears isn’t providing basic, necessary services. So the criterion is a reasonable proxy.

While widely available provider lists suggest wide availability a total of 181 medical providers within a thirty-mile radius from one ZIP code in Austin. One potentially barred Planned Parenthood clinic which Grimes reports as “busy” is located within the ZIP boundaries.  Grimes confirmed that, in fact, only thirteen of the 181 providers accepted Medicaid and performed Pap smears. That’s 7.2%.

Grimes has done  a very elegant piece of investigative reporting, but we wish to stress that she’s demonstrated two problems:

  1. the controversy about Planned Parenthood, in the first place, suggests a level of political discourse in which life-or-death decisions are made with reckless disregard for the ground truth;
  2. the prospect of a radical reduction of basic health services to women – also a life-or-death issue. It seems akin to making transportation arrangements – for a group without a lot of political voice – without as much counting the life boats or verifying that they are seaworthy.

Here’s an excerpt from Ms. Grimes’ piece, Without Planned Parenthood, What’s Left for Texas Women? Not Much.

Of the 13 providers that could actually see a Medicaid Women’s Health Program patient, the thirteenth is a forty minute drive from East Austin. And that’s with no traffic. And if you live in Austin, you know there’s no such thing as no traffic. By public transportation it would take over two hours to get to that clinic. And that’s with a half mile walk at the end. Excluding Planned Parenthood from the Women’s Health Program absolutely reduces access to quality care. Full stop. Already, the state has demonstrated that the systems it says it has in place to support women without Planned Parenthood don’t work. Trying to get low-income, quality reproductive health care in Texas, in a major metropolitan area like Austin, without Planned Parenthood is like trying to get a pap smear at a colonoscopy clinic. And I know because I actually tried.

What If … Gore had been President?

In the XB Cold Fingers song, “Sunbathing In Siberia,” (Listen / Try or Buy / Lyrics ) Al Gore I wrote,

“If Gore had been awarded the White House
he’d chain us to Kyoto, don’t ya see.
There’d be solar panels on the rooftops,
wind power, clean power, almost free.”

While the song is a tongue-in-cheek look at energy, climate change, and the election of 2000; what if Gore had been the 43rd President?

In this series of posts, I’ll explore this scenario in terms of what it would have meant for the Supreme Court, foreign policy and defense.

  • Who would Gore have appointed to the Supreme Court?
  • How would they have decided Citizens United and Florence v Burlington?
  • What about September 11 – would the 19 terrorists have been able to hijack 4 planes and crash two into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon?
  • If so, would we have gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan?
  • If not, would we have gone to war in Iraq anyway?
  • And what about Iran? Israel? The Arab Spring?
  • And the economy here in the United States?

This next post in the series looks at the Supreme Court. Stay tuned.

Cognitive Abilities Compromised by Wealth?

Gina Rinehart

The Anna Maria Blog reported here

[Australian] Mining magnate Gina Rinehart intends to bring in semi-skilled migrants to work in her mines.   She doesn’t want Australian workers because our wages are too high so she’s had a brilliant idea – bring in desperate people from other nations willing and overjoyed at the opportunity to work for half the Australian wage. She’s trying to convince anyone who will listen that it’s got nothing to do with profit, she’s not being unpatriotic, she is simply suffering from an acute labour shortage.

The Anna Maria Blog reported  in the same post that there are 10’s of thousands of Australians who would want the jobs Rinehart wants to fill, but they would want them at union scale.

Rinehart has been publicly advocating that Australians should work for no more than $2 per day, given the rates at which Africans and Asians work. Does she include herself in that? If she was to start working for $2 per day? As she is said to makes $600 per second, 51.840 Million per day, what would she do with the $51,839,998 excess?

Mark Memmott, showing that he can cover arcane neuroscience as well as hard news at the NPR “Two-Way” blog, has reported that  Rinehart, reported to be accumulating money at a rate of $600/second, appears to be having trouble with self-awareness, cognition, and empathy. Some memory loss may be indicated. These symptoms of cognitive deficits are most marked in a video which Rinehart produced herself, posted on the website of the Australian Mining Club (one suspects that the A.M.C.’s wine cellars are at exactly the right depth), in which she argues that great fortune is the product of merit. The BBC, which reported the $600 per second figure, also reported that she acquired her wealth via inheritance. It may be that her merit consists of having persuaded the legator of her merit in leaving her or his fortune to her, or that merit may have been self-evident.

Forbes currently lists Rinehart as the world’s 29th-richest person, with a net monetary worth of $18 billion, and the wealthiest woman from the Asia/Pacific region. She could be headed toward becoming the world’s richest person, the magazine speculated last year.

If Australia is, as Rinehart claims, to expensive for business (  Anna Maria Blog / Herald Sun / LA Times ) maybe she should move her operations, and herself, to China or Africa. If she did so would doubtless make Belgium’s King Leopold look like a prince, or Mother Theresa.

Do Rinehart’s mining interests include the mining of lead or mercury?  Does she eat the lead? Mainline the mercury? Perhaps she eats whale?

It has also been suggested that lower income class warriors want to “Eat the Rich.” If that is the case, Rinehart could feed a lot of them.

It’s sad that such an obviously superior woman should be experiencing so much stress as the result of her wealth or the rate of  accumulation of same. Perhaps Australian health authorities should temporarily place her funds in the hands of a custodian while she returns to her senses or regains her humanity or her sense of affiliation with same.

Perhaps Rinehart should spend some time with Paris Hilton. While Hilton’s net monetary worth is estimated at only $100 Million, as opposed to Rinehart’s $18 Billion, but from an existential perspective there doesn’t seem to be an qualitiative difference between $18 Billion of net monetary worth and $100 Million of net monetary worth – both are greater than an individual can ever reasonably expect to spend. And I suspect that Hilton has more fun and may have a more profound sense of herself as a person.

Note that I use the term “Net Monetary Worth” rather than “Net Worth.” This is deliberate and an attempt to distinguish between a person’s intrinsic or existential worth from the value of assets or resources at their disposal.

Paris Hilton, in a bright yellow silk or satin blouse.

Microserrated Kitchen Knife – Never Needs Sharpening

10 CM / 3.9 in Nogent Profile. Florence Fabricant’s article,  DINER’S JOURNAL; Food Stuff: Keep the Hacksaw In the Garage, from the Style Section of the New York Times, caught my eye, and fired up my imagination in regards to citrus and other fruit drinks in the heat.

Neatly slice that blushing peach or that ripe tomato bursting with juice. Cut thin rounds of firm, peppery salami. Gently quarter sea scallops. Whack wedges of lime for drinks. These and many more everyday kitchen jobs will not daunt the new French paring knives by Nogent, with handles in bathing-suit colors.

What makes these knives unusual is that the stainless steel blades have serrations so fine as to be almost microscopic. They do not give hacksaw treatment to delicate fruits; they can handle tougher jobs, and, for those whose sharpening steels and stones simply gather dust, they require no sharpening.

Stainless steel knives with nearly microscopic serrations and no need of sharpening? The implications are not trivial: firefighters and rescue workers cutting people from seat belts; remote medical facilities able to re-use surgical instruments after sterilization but without resharpening? Survival knives which can undergo protracted use in harsh environments?

According to Nogent’s Canadian website, the firm is French, has been in existence since 1823.

 

Slashdot: new camo paint also protects against heat

New Face Paint Protects Soldiers Against Bomb Blasts

Posted by samzenpus on Monday August 27, @02:26PM

from the not-in-the-face dept.

Zothecula writes "For millennia, face paint has helped soldiers avoid being seen by enemy forces. Recently, however, a team of scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi announced that a new type of face paint may soon also be able to protect against the heat of bomb blasts and other explosions. Additionally, a clear version of the paint could be used by civilian firefighters."

via Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters.

NYPD Use of force outside Empire State Building: should we be investing in more use-of-force training?

In a shooting just after 9:00 A.M. Friday, two NYPD officers shot and killed a man who’d just shot a former co-worker. and also wounded nine bystanders.

By Associated Press, Published: August 24 | Updated: Saturday, August 25, 5:04 PM

 

NEW YORK — All nine people injured during a dramatic confrontation between police and a gunman outside the Empire State Building were wounded by gunfire from the two officers, police said Saturday, citing ballistics evidence. Via NYPD: Ballistics show all 9 wounded outside Empire State Building were shot by police – The Washington Post:

The veteran patrolmen who opened fire on the suit-clad gunman, Jeffrey Johnson, had only an instant to react when he whirled around and pointed a .45-caliber pistol at them as they approached him from behind on a busy sidewalk.

Officer Craig Matthews shot seven times, and Officer Robert Sinishtaj fired nine times, police said. Neither had ever fired their weapons before on a patrol. The volley of gunfire felled Johnson in just a few seconds and left nine other people bleeding on the sidewalk. In the initial chaos Friday, it wasn’t clear whether Johnson or the officers were responsible for the trail of the wounded, but based on ballistic and other evidence, “it appears that all nine of the victims were struck either by fragments or by bullets fired by police,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters Saturday at a community event in Harlem. Police officials have said the officers appeared to have no choice but to shoot Johnson, whose body had 10 bullet wounds in the chest, arms and legs.

After-the-fact criticism is a cheap shot, and while these two cops did what they had to do, it’s still fair to question NYPD firearms policy: are our officers using the best handguns, given our population density, and whether we’re giving our officers not only the best training possible, but sufficient hours at sufficient intervals.

The truth be told – whatever the merits and failings of N.Y.P.D. Academy training, once it’s over, our cops are going to the range to qualify twice a year. It’s not enough.

Ecuador offers Wikileaks founder indefinite asylum

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has been offered asylum indefinitely in the Ecuadorian embassy in London:

CARACAS, Venezuela — The government of Ecuador is prepared to allow Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to remain in its embassy in London indefinitely under a type of humanitarian protection, a government official said in Quito on Wednesday night. Mr. Assange has been holed up in the embassy for two months seeking asylum.

Amid an escalating confrontation with Britain over Mr. Assange, Ecuadorean officials said they would announce the decision of the country’s president, Rafael Correa, on Thursday. The official said that the British government had made it clear it would not allow Mr. Assange to leave the country to travel to Ecuador, so even with a grant of asylum or similar protection, he would probably remain stuck in the embassy.

From Ecuador to Let Julian Assange Stay in Its London Embassy, by  William Neuman and Maggie Ayala at NYTimes.com

We’re not sure – not having reviewed the Wikileaks document set – that we’ve reached an opinion of the damage done by Mr. Assange; on the one hand, we believe the adage that, in political matters, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” But governments do have legitimate needs,  particularly in the short term, to keep confidences, and especially to protect sources and methods. But we have a sense that the rules are being bent in Mr. Assange’s case: the sudden appearance of accusations of sex crimes committed in Sweden, and now reports that Britain threatened Ecuador with essentially using force to invade its embassy, effectively discarding several centuries of diplomatic law and custom. Those diplomatic practices are part of what allows us to keep lines of communication, direct and indirect, between nations, and have the potential of keeping open the possibility of non-violent resolution even when at the edge of the abyss.

Earlier Wednesday, Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, said that the British authorities had threatened to barge into the country’s embassy in London if officials did not hand over Mr. Assange. “Today we have received from the United Kingdom an explicit threat in writing that they could assault our embassy in London if Ecuador does not hand over Julian Assange,” Mr. Patiño said at a news conference in Quito, adding defiantly, “We are not a British colony.”

Also from Ecuador to Let Julian Assange Stay in Its London Embassy, by  William Neuman and Maggie Ayala at NYTimes.com

 

Assessing the Threat of Cyberwar

Sample Map

Bob Garfield began the segment, Assessing the True Threat of Cyberwar, on the WNYC radio show On the Media, on Friday, August 10, 2012,

Last year when a water pump in Springfield, Illinois burned out, a water district employee noticed that the system had been accessed remotely from somewhere inside Russia. Two days later, a memo leaked from the Illinois Intelligence Fusion Center, made up of state police, members of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, blamed the pump failure on Russian hackers. It looked to be the first example on American soil of the worst case scenario in cyber warfare, that a hacker could wreak havoc in the physical world.

Continue reading →

Gonorrhea Evolving; Almost Untreatable

Treatment history. Courtesy of CDC and the AthlanticJames Hamblin, MD, at The Atlantic, here,  writes,

The list of effective antibiotics has been dwindling as the bacteria became resistant, and now it’s down to one. Five years ago, the CDC said fluoroquinolones were no longer effective, but oral cephalosporins were still a common/easy treatment. Now injected ceftriaxone is the only recommended effective drug we have left. And it has to be given along with either azithromycin or doxycycline.

Dr. Hamblin and The Atlantic also reproduced the graphic, above, tracing the treatments in use from 1988 to 2010.  Penicillins stopped being effective in the early 1990’s. While this news is disturbing, it also illustrates how evolution works. A small percentage survive because of natural resistance. They reproduce. Their offspring have the resistant genes.  Whether it’s grey moths that are obvious on trees in pristine environments and difficult to see on trees where the smog coloured the bark, pests in a farm field, or infectious bacteria, the principle is the same.

Looking from a whole systems perspective, maybe we need to develop medications that stimulate the human immune response, rather than medications that try to kill the bacteria. Continue reading →

AT&T Seeks to Phase Out Landlines: “Relics of a Bygone Era”

POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines proved an extraordinarily rugged communications system, highly energy efficient, and easy to keep going in the event of power failure (because while the local nodes, known in the trade as “switches” or “central offices” may need emergency generators, they’re not power hungry).

Another critical point is that while the central offices (C.O.’s) get their power from the local utility or emergency generators, the phones get their power from the central office. Thus, telephone service stays up in a power failure.

Piezo-electric phones are another rugged and extraordinary technology. These are sound powered-telephones. Sound waves of a person’s voice can power a clear and audible signal for up to five miles. (If you’ve seen them in action in the field or in movies, the cranking which precedes the call is for the bell on the other end.) These phones are required in underground mining, on naval ships, and are in use in prisons and jails to provide communications between the two sides of transparent barriers in visiting rooms. (Hence the absence of wires leading from the handsets).

That’s why the copper-wire based POTS system – a network which can survive a power network failure – is so critical. Here’s what James Grahame of Retro Thing reported back in 2009:

AT&T recently informed the FCC that they consider traditional landline telephones to be “relics of a by-gone era.” It’s a sad moment, because it comes as official acknowledgment that Alexander Graham Bell’s quaint analog system is now outdated enough to be a corporate nuisance.

However, the truth is that the plain old telephone service (POTS) has been mostly digital for years. The only analog part of the system is the final run to your house. So, while internet-based Voice Over IP (VoIP) service would be easier to deploy and maintain, those who insist on having a fixed home line won’t see a dramatic difference.

I’m mildly concerned by AT&T’s assertion that, “It makes no sense to require service providers to operate and maintain two distinct networks when technology and consumer preferences have made one of them increasingly obsolete.” Surely they’re intimately aware that the mobile phone network is considerably more profitable than the landline side of the business. Cellular service requires personal handsets, each with its own (often steep) fees and data surcharges. After all, few people replace their landline handsets every 18 months, and texting is out of the question on a rotary phone.

AT&T Seeks to Phase Out Landlines

Grahame is on the money here; we think there’s a strong argument to be  made for local sound-powered phone networks, say between police stations, hospitals, places of worship and schools  (both often used in emergencies for organization and shelter). See also our earlier post, Military leaders conclude simpler technology less failure-prone, more reliable.

Wikipedia Entry: Sound-powered telephone

Three marines murdered after accepting dinner invitation in Afghanistan; number of coalition forces killed by Afghans rises

, writing on NPR’s news blog “The Two-Way,” reports on the latest attack by Afghanis posing as allies of coalition force. From Three U.S. Troops Killed In Latest ‘Green On Blue’ Attack:

“Three U.S. Forces-Afghanistan service members died following an attack by an individual wearing an Afghan uniform in southwest Afghanistan today,” according to a statement from the International Security Assistance Force – Afghanistan.

NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, who is in Kabul, says more than one individual in an Afghan military or police uniform may have done the shooting. She’s reports that “a senior Afghan police official” said the Americans were invited to a dinner and that during the meal several police recruits stood up and opened fire.

The New York Times writes that “Muhammad Sharif, the governor of Sangin District of Helmand Province, where the killings took place,” said it was a local police commander who invited the Americans “to eat dinner at his check post on Thursday.”

There’s been a claim of responsibility from someone saying he speaks for the Taliban.

CNN notes that today’s attack “came a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned an attack in the eastern Kunar province that killed USAID Foreign Service Officer Ragaei Abdelfattah, three ISAF service members and an Afghan civilian, and injured a State Department Foreign Service officer. That led Clinton to issue a statement “strongly” condemning the attack — but adding that “it strengthens our resolve to continue working with the Afghan people to build their economy, democratic institutions, rule of law, and security so that Afghanistan can stand on its own as a stable, secure, and increasingly prosperous country.”

“Glowing Tooll Handles” – reduce loss of critical tools during crises –

From user jolshefsky at the always-outstanding site Instructables, this simple technique for making tools hard to lose in the dark, Glowing Tool Handles – a technique helpful during mionor inconveniences, but which may rise to the chllenge and become more useful the serious the situation.

We recommend the following: ig you’re only going to do this for one type of tool, do it for flashlights and around light switches.

But think of other applications: first aid equipment, any tools such as paintbrushes,