Did you know that the CSUB theatre is haunted? Did you know that students once chased each other around this campus with weapons? Did you know that those animals on the walls of the old Science Building are actually...no, I can't bring myself to tell you.
What are your scary Halloween stories? The only rule is that they must be set at CSUB.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Final Essay Assignment
Your final essay will be a synthesis. The question you will answer is simple: what constitutes good music?
You have the opportunity to write a 3-5 page essay synthesizing three sources. Remember, you are not doing compare and contrast. Instead, you are finding common threads that run through your three sources and examining them in detail.
Your three sources are as follows.
1. The lyrics from the song you chose (you may choose any song lyrics).
2. The essay defining good music.
3. Another source of your choice that relates to your particular choice of music.(music review, review of the cd, review of the artist)
Here's an idea of where to find #3:
http://pitchfork.com/
www.metacritic.com/music/
www.punknews.org
http://www.rollingstone.com/
SCHEDULE
11/2 Bring your "five points."
11/4 regular class
11/6 Furlough Day...no class
11/9 Individual Writing Conferences
11/11 Campus Closed: Veteran’s Day
11/13 Individual Writing Conferences
11/16 Typed Rough Draft Due in Class (no draft=no pass)
11/18 regular class
11/20 FINAL DRAFT DUE IN CLASS
BY MIDNIGHT ON 11/20 YOUR PAPER MUST ALSO BE UPLOADED TO TURNITIN.
You have the opportunity to write a 3-5 page essay synthesizing three sources. Remember, you are not doing compare and contrast. Instead, you are finding common threads that run through your three sources and examining them in detail.
Your three sources are as follows.
1. The lyrics from the song you chose (you may choose any song lyrics).
2. The essay defining good music.
3. Another source of your choice that relates to your particular choice of music.(music review, review of the cd, review of the artist)
Here's an idea of where to find #3:
http://pitchfork.com/
www.metacritic.com/music/
www.punknews.org
http://www.rollingstone.com/
SCHEDULE
11/2 Bring your "five points."
11/4 regular class
11/6 Furlough Day...no class
11/9 Individual Writing Conferences
11/11 Campus Closed: Veteran’s Day
11/13 Individual Writing Conferences
11/16 Typed Rough Draft Due in Class (no draft=no pass)
11/18 regular class
11/20 FINAL DRAFT DUE IN CLASS
BY MIDNIGHT ON 11/20 YOUR PAPER MUST ALSO BE UPLOADED TO TURNITIN.
Defining Good Music
http://www.indianmusiclessons.com/docs/DefineMusic.pdf (essay written by a professor of music)
Can We Define Good Music?
Sanjoy Bandopadhyay
In India we see the music lovers and connoisseurs frequently discussing music performances. When we hear some appreciative comments, those are mostly focussed on renowned musicians' performances or towards the musicians' music those are following some established style of some celebrity. Although, I do not mean to say that the celebrities are spared from severe criticisms. The topic "What is good music?" seems to be more subjective than objective, still the factors those make music good and a search for the definitions of good music may be an interesting study.
A music performance accepted as good by a group of listeners may be rejected as 'not so good' or even 'bad' by another group clearly shows its subjective nature. But, there are performances those are generally accepted as good by most of the listeners present in a concert hall. What makes some music widely acceptable? With this comes another question. A music performance that is performed in Bhopal if performed in Calcutta, would it receive similar response from the general audience? Are some elements common in any accepted good music? Are the same elements of music are accepted to be good by any general band of listeners of any place? Good or bad is always subject to some references. The general references are the place, time and
the person or the subject. This again takes to two different basic references; one is the performer and second the listener. A music performance can be good to the performer and also good to the listener, a music performance may be 'not so good' to a performer but very well accepted by the listeners, and other possible combinations of good and not so good between the performer and the listeners.
I had mail exchanges on this with Dr. Bernard Bel1 he pointed out two basic references. He wrote:
"Perhaps you would get two definitions (on Good music), one by musicians and one by
listeners. For a musician, good music is probably associated with dedication (no cheap work) and sincerity (no pretense). The musician ought to feel "in tune" with his/her creation in the same way loving parents relates with their children: a child is the parent's product but she is also an autonomous human being. In the same way, artists should consider their creation as something autonomous whose relation with the public does not affect them. In my view, therefore, "good music" is associated with a musician being modest about it. I think that the great music masters in India nurtured this idea that they do not "compose" music, rather it is channeled through their medium. For a listener, things are more simple. Good music is what makes them feel in harmony with whatever they call their deep being. A feeling of peace, indeed, most of the times, but occasionally a strong urge to change their lives and to change the world."
We do not easily find any reference of "good music" in any of our well-known treatises.2 We see the mention of "guna-dosa of Gayaka and Vadaka", i.e. the qualities and shortfalls of a vocalist or instrumentalist but rarely any discussion3 on good music. The "guna-dosa" (good qualities and shortfalls) is mainly concentrated on the physical movements of the musicians during performances. What we listen today, the basic values for good music are to be in tune, in laya
and in raga with good tayyari and taseer. Tayyari literally means preparation to do something. For music the general understanding for tayyari is the ability to perform fast passages with clarity, tunefulness and command. Tayyari is usually associated with tana-s but can be associated with any musical executions like meend, murki, gamaka, etc. Taseer refers to expected musical effect created out of musical executions. Taseer literally means to be effective/effect/quality. So a desired effect produced from one or a series of musical action/s may be called taseer. Supposing a vocalist land on the Shadaj with effective intonation, timing etc.
resulting to a musically effective phrasing, this will be called taseer. Sometimes we hear people saying that a particular musical piece creating "lav"4 (meaning flame). "Lav"5 indicates towards a compelling musical effect when a piece gradually reaching compositional climax. With the passage the audience's inner self gets ignited. The quality of a particular music rendering has some subjective references. For music there are two basic references; one is the performer and second the listener. As I told earlier also, a music performance can be good to the performer and also good to the listener, a music performance may be 'not so good' to a performer but very well accepted by the listeners, and other possible
combinations of good and not so good between the performer and the listeners. Here is a scope of long discussion. I believe there is a specific role of the listeners also in the complete frame of music making. It is not only the musician who makes music but the listeners also play an important role.
One point of consideration may be the general speed of receptivity of music by the audience. There is a speed of understanding of musical depictions. If the flow of music becomes too much within a short span of time the height of musical content can not appropriately register on the audience. I have seen the well known sitar player Budhaditya Mukherjee failing to impress the audience to the expected level when he himself was quite satisfied with his performance (as I could find out after
later discussions with him). It happens because quite often his speed of progress and going towards deeper (and more complicated) executions are without giving appropriate time to the audience to get prepared for taking it or the speed of progress to the subsequent stages is too fast for the audience. So, the effect on the audience is a clumsy type of feeling although they accept that the technical
executions were of very good level because the executions were tuneful, crisp and clear. The same thing we can find with our veteran sarod player Buddhadev Dasgupta. Buddhadev Dasgupta is my senior gurubhai 6 and is a musician with brilliant musical ideas. But the flow of musical ideas stream out at such a speed and as there is no appropriate respite for the audience, the listeners at times fail to enjoy the music to its appropriate height. The same thing may be the root cause behind many less
successful performances of able musicians. The thing to understand is, the listeners also play a kind of interactive role as the music proceeds. The general audiences reach the optimum response level under a specific speed belt of musical progression. When this speed of music progression matches the listeners requirements then the music registers optimum effect. Here I would like to put it clearly
that I am not talking of the speed of music execution, I am referring to the speed of music progression where music may progress from one phase to another with due highlighting of each phase. The raga may get incarnated and make its presence felt at every phase. The audience must get the opportunity to play their part with the performer and this interactive process helps the music to hit its peak. In the process the musician must give space for the listener to "fill in" in a
creative/imaginative process.
Dr. Bel puts down audience's role in effective music making process nicely. He writes:
A necessary condition for experiencing rasa (aesthetic pleasure as a "gustative process") is a sufficient degree of imprecision, an incompleteness of the codification triggering the imagination (kalpana) of each auditor, thereby yielding a "second creation" (bhavana) within the field of the "unspoken.”
Again back to the main point; why is the rose beautiful? It is beautiful because it is beautiful. To define the good and the beautiful through a medium other than the medium of expression itself is difficult. One point is how the receiver takes on a particular piece of art. Assessment of good or bad is done out of one's contextual understanding of the particular creative form. One can, of course, try to underline the general values of a particular art form. For Indian Music the values
are the archaic qualities fused with the artiste's liberty for expressions and creations. In raga music the subtle mixture of the musicians' individuality in their performances and the retaining of the traditional values of the performed raga are some of the important qualities. The sense of being boundless under confinement of the raga prescription is possibly the keyword. The musician takes the flight within the defined territories of a chosen raga and expands the provided
space to generate an effect of boundlessness.
I have been wandering for a long time to find out the answer that why a music piece gets easy entry to the mass audiences' hearts and the others can not. It is not easy to define why the first stroke of Ustd. Vilayet Khan, at times, compels the audience (initiated ones) to say "aah" or for example, how Ustd. Zakir Hussein gets such an easy entry with his tabla to the audiences' heart. Why does this happen? The possible explanation is that the music hits the mass' inner being immediately. The audience gets impressed in two ways. They get moved when the music matches their imagination and they get dazzled when the music taking some unexpected shape
that is even much more beautiful than what the listeners had expected. When this happens then the pleasure of creation of the performer spread around successfully and reaches the listeners' inner being and this is apparently one of the points that makes good music. At this point the music starts articulating like a language.7 This is like an orator giving a speech on a topic with full command. An orator's speech brings in many articulations naturally. If the language is converted to some meaningless articulations still one can hear the basic effects of the intended
ideas that the orator possibly wanted to express. [A closer simile is, reciting a poem with full poetic feelings.] Music has more pronounced tonal and pitch shades and this is capable of expressing ideas those are difficult or near impossible to transmit even through vocal language expressions. Music is capable to transmit subtle feelings of human and nature's different moods.
When this happens then the music becomes acceptable to the listeners and they start enjoying the performance with complete unison with their inner self.
As a performer my feeling is, when I totally get united with the flow of musical images and the instrumental execution the music gets much louder expressions and the audiences start enjoying the musical flow. Here the raga gets its life and start behaving like an incarnated character.
Every executed ang and the delineation relate itself to the post and pre-stated contexts. Each meend, each tana, krintan, zamzama, murki and all the ornamentation forms are played down with meaning and with reference to the context.
Here are some qualities of good music:
Ø The sound of the instrument/voice should be pleasing and warmly acceptable.
Ø Each musical phrase must carry some aesthetic meaning and not just the execution of some musical habits.
Ø Musical phrases must be executed with aesthetic timing, with required density of sound, crispness and clarity matching to the music creation needs.
Ø The speed of music progression may match with the receptivity demand of the audiences. The listeners may comfortably play a silent interactive role as the performance goes on.
Ø There are some puritans those like the old type of instrument sounds and very faithful
adherence to the archetype music. These days such music connoisseurs are getting reduced in number. Most of the present music lovers look for high speed tan-s, meends, gamaka-s etc. Some look for interesting laya patterns, different speed variations, interesting starting and ending points, etc. But, it is good that the archaic values of music may be present with its full glory and substance.
Ø Only in appropriate mental state effective music making and receiving is possible. So, the musician before and during the performance must be appropriately receptive to his musical ideas so that the ideas may get the right medium for full musical expressions. The same is true for the listeners who should be rightly receptive to receive the subtle and brilliant musical effects.
Ø When the inner being of the performer vibrates harmoniously with the music, this indicates that good music taking shape and consequently this music naturally vibrates harmoniously with the inner beings of the receptive listeners.
Can We Define Good Music?
Sanjoy Bandopadhyay
In India we see the music lovers and connoisseurs frequently discussing music performances. When we hear some appreciative comments, those are mostly focussed on renowned musicians' performances or towards the musicians' music those are following some established style of some celebrity. Although, I do not mean to say that the celebrities are spared from severe criticisms. The topic "What is good music?" seems to be more subjective than objective, still the factors those make music good and a search for the definitions of good music may be an interesting study.
A music performance accepted as good by a group of listeners may be rejected as 'not so good' or even 'bad' by another group clearly shows its subjective nature. But, there are performances those are generally accepted as good by most of the listeners present in a concert hall. What makes some music widely acceptable? With this comes another question. A music performance that is performed in Bhopal if performed in Calcutta, would it receive similar response from the general audience? Are some elements common in any accepted good music? Are the same elements of music are accepted to be good by any general band of listeners of any place? Good or bad is always subject to some references. The general references are the place, time and
the person or the subject. This again takes to two different basic references; one is the performer and second the listener. A music performance can be good to the performer and also good to the listener, a music performance may be 'not so good' to a performer but very well accepted by the listeners, and other possible combinations of good and not so good between the performer and the listeners.
I had mail exchanges on this with Dr. Bernard Bel1 he pointed out two basic references. He wrote:
"Perhaps you would get two definitions (on Good music), one by musicians and one by
listeners. For a musician, good music is probably associated with dedication (no cheap work) and sincerity (no pretense). The musician ought to feel "in tune" with his/her creation in the same way loving parents relates with their children: a child is the parent's product but she is also an autonomous human being. In the same way, artists should consider their creation as something autonomous whose relation with the public does not affect them. In my view, therefore, "good music" is associated with a musician being modest about it. I think that the great music masters in India nurtured this idea that they do not "compose" music, rather it is channeled through their medium. For a listener, things are more simple. Good music is what makes them feel in harmony with whatever they call their deep being. A feeling of peace, indeed, most of the times, but occasionally a strong urge to change their lives and to change the world."
We do not easily find any reference of "good music" in any of our well-known treatises.2 We see the mention of "guna-dosa of Gayaka and Vadaka", i.e. the qualities and shortfalls of a vocalist or instrumentalist but rarely any discussion3 on good music. The "guna-dosa" (good qualities and shortfalls) is mainly concentrated on the physical movements of the musicians during performances. What we listen today, the basic values for good music are to be in tune, in laya
and in raga with good tayyari and taseer. Tayyari literally means preparation to do something. For music the general understanding for tayyari is the ability to perform fast passages with clarity, tunefulness and command. Tayyari is usually associated with tana-s but can be associated with any musical executions like meend, murki, gamaka, etc. Taseer refers to expected musical effect created out of musical executions. Taseer literally means to be effective/effect/quality. So a desired effect produced from one or a series of musical action/s may be called taseer. Supposing a vocalist land on the Shadaj with effective intonation, timing etc.
resulting to a musically effective phrasing, this will be called taseer. Sometimes we hear people saying that a particular musical piece creating "lav"4 (meaning flame). "Lav"5 indicates towards a compelling musical effect when a piece gradually reaching compositional climax. With the passage the audience's inner self gets ignited. The quality of a particular music rendering has some subjective references. For music there are two basic references; one is the performer and second the listener. As I told earlier also, a music performance can be good to the performer and also good to the listener, a music performance may be 'not so good' to a performer but very well accepted by the listeners, and other possible
combinations of good and not so good between the performer and the listeners. Here is a scope of long discussion. I believe there is a specific role of the listeners also in the complete frame of music making. It is not only the musician who makes music but the listeners also play an important role.
One point of consideration may be the general speed of receptivity of music by the audience. There is a speed of understanding of musical depictions. If the flow of music becomes too much within a short span of time the height of musical content can not appropriately register on the audience. I have seen the well known sitar player Budhaditya Mukherjee failing to impress the audience to the expected level when he himself was quite satisfied with his performance (as I could find out after
later discussions with him). It happens because quite often his speed of progress and going towards deeper (and more complicated) executions are without giving appropriate time to the audience to get prepared for taking it or the speed of progress to the subsequent stages is too fast for the audience. So, the effect on the audience is a clumsy type of feeling although they accept that the technical
executions were of very good level because the executions were tuneful, crisp and clear. The same thing we can find with our veteran sarod player Buddhadev Dasgupta. Buddhadev Dasgupta is my senior gurubhai 6 and is a musician with brilliant musical ideas. But the flow of musical ideas stream out at such a speed and as there is no appropriate respite for the audience, the listeners at times fail to enjoy the music to its appropriate height. The same thing may be the root cause behind many less
successful performances of able musicians. The thing to understand is, the listeners also play a kind of interactive role as the music proceeds. The general audiences reach the optimum response level under a specific speed belt of musical progression. When this speed of music progression matches the listeners requirements then the music registers optimum effect. Here I would like to put it clearly
that I am not talking of the speed of music execution, I am referring to the speed of music progression where music may progress from one phase to another with due highlighting of each phase. The raga may get incarnated and make its presence felt at every phase. The audience must get the opportunity to play their part with the performer and this interactive process helps the music to hit its peak. In the process the musician must give space for the listener to "fill in" in a
creative/imaginative process.
Dr. Bel puts down audience's role in effective music making process nicely. He writes:
A necessary condition for experiencing rasa (aesthetic pleasure as a "gustative process") is a sufficient degree of imprecision, an incompleteness of the codification triggering the imagination (kalpana) of each auditor, thereby yielding a "second creation" (bhavana) within the field of the "unspoken.”
Again back to the main point; why is the rose beautiful? It is beautiful because it is beautiful. To define the good and the beautiful through a medium other than the medium of expression itself is difficult. One point is how the receiver takes on a particular piece of art. Assessment of good or bad is done out of one's contextual understanding of the particular creative form. One can, of course, try to underline the general values of a particular art form. For Indian Music the values
are the archaic qualities fused with the artiste's liberty for expressions and creations. In raga music the subtle mixture of the musicians' individuality in their performances and the retaining of the traditional values of the performed raga are some of the important qualities. The sense of being boundless under confinement of the raga prescription is possibly the keyword. The musician takes the flight within the defined territories of a chosen raga and expands the provided
space to generate an effect of boundlessness.
I have been wandering for a long time to find out the answer that why a music piece gets easy entry to the mass audiences' hearts and the others can not. It is not easy to define why the first stroke of Ustd. Vilayet Khan, at times, compels the audience (initiated ones) to say "aah" or for example, how Ustd. Zakir Hussein gets such an easy entry with his tabla to the audiences' heart. Why does this happen? The possible explanation is that the music hits the mass' inner being immediately. The audience gets impressed in two ways. They get moved when the music matches their imagination and they get dazzled when the music taking some unexpected shape
that is even much more beautiful than what the listeners had expected. When this happens then the pleasure of creation of the performer spread around successfully and reaches the listeners' inner being and this is apparently one of the points that makes good music. At this point the music starts articulating like a language.7 This is like an orator giving a speech on a topic with full command. An orator's speech brings in many articulations naturally. If the language is converted to some meaningless articulations still one can hear the basic effects of the intended
ideas that the orator possibly wanted to express. [A closer simile is, reciting a poem with full poetic feelings.] Music has more pronounced tonal and pitch shades and this is capable of expressing ideas those are difficult or near impossible to transmit even through vocal language expressions. Music is capable to transmit subtle feelings of human and nature's different moods.
When this happens then the music becomes acceptable to the listeners and they start enjoying the performance with complete unison with their inner self.
As a performer my feeling is, when I totally get united with the flow of musical images and the instrumental execution the music gets much louder expressions and the audiences start enjoying the musical flow. Here the raga gets its life and start behaving like an incarnated character.
Every executed ang and the delineation relate itself to the post and pre-stated contexts. Each meend, each tana, krintan, zamzama, murki and all the ornamentation forms are played down with meaning and with reference to the context.
Here are some qualities of good music:
Ø The sound of the instrument/voice should be pleasing and warmly acceptable.
Ø Each musical phrase must carry some aesthetic meaning and not just the execution of some musical habits.
Ø Musical phrases must be executed with aesthetic timing, with required density of sound, crispness and clarity matching to the music creation needs.
Ø The speed of music progression may match with the receptivity demand of the audiences. The listeners may comfortably play a silent interactive role as the performance goes on.
Ø There are some puritans those like the old type of instrument sounds and very faithful
adherence to the archetype music. These days such music connoisseurs are getting reduced in number. Most of the present music lovers look for high speed tan-s, meends, gamaka-s etc. Some look for interesting laya patterns, different speed variations, interesting starting and ending points, etc. But, it is good that the archaic values of music may be present with its full glory and substance.
Ø Only in appropriate mental state effective music making and receiving is possible. So, the musician before and during the performance must be appropriately receptive to his musical ideas so that the ideas may get the right medium for full musical expressions. The same is true for the listeners who should be rightly receptive to receive the subtle and brilliant musical effects.
Ø When the inner being of the performer vibrates harmoniously with the music, this indicates that good music taking shape and consequently this music naturally vibrates harmoniously with the inner beings of the receptive listeners.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
OKAY, I LIED...HERE'S ANOTHER CHANCE FOR EXTRA CREDIT
Go to the presentation of author Joseph Williams on November 4th and you get 2% extra credit on your Lakota Way essay.
I'll be there. Find me and say the following secret code: "I am inspired to live a life of virtue, like a good Lakota would."
I'll be there. Find me and say the following secret code: "I am inspired to live a life of virtue, like a good Lakota would."
Monday, October 26, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Should husbands who cheat be whipped?
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (Reuters) – Most Bruneians want husbands who cheat on their wives to be whipped, according to a recent survey in the Muslim-majority country.
The survey, conducted by website brudirect (www.brudirect.com), found 76 percent of 272 respondents said men should be whipped for having affairs while only 55 percent said unfaithful wives should receive the same punishment.
"The result of the survey is an indication of the pent-up feelings that women harbor against irresponsible men," an unnamed social worker from Brunei was quoted as saying on the website.
The oil-rich state of Brunei, located on Borneo Island, has a population of almost 400,000 of which 66 percent are Muslim.
(Reporting by David Chance, editing by Sugita Katyal)
Officers Swarm South LA in Gang Crackdown
Is this healthy, good for our cities, to conduct such gang sweeps?
---------------------
More than 45 people had been arrested by 7 a.m. Thursday in a major gang crackdown in South LA.
Hundreds of police officers and federal agents served warrants on the Rolling 40s. The gang has a "vice grip" on the neighborhood, according to police.
Authorities said the operation involves about 1,100 law enforcement agents. They plan to serve warrants for 75 individuals.
Authorities set up a booking area in a parking lot in Exposition Park.
Gang Crackdown in South LA
They have a vise grip on the neighborhood, and we are going to release that grip this morning," LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said.
The operation is part of a 16-month investigation.
Neighborhoods in which the warrants were served included Crenshaw, Jefferson Park, West Adams, Baldwin Village, University Park, Athens Park, Gramercy Park and Hyde Park.
Families get to raise their children, send the kids to school, without as much fear involving this particular street gang. ... The communities are held hostage, in a sense," Albanese said.
The FBI's Laura Eimiller said more than 500 people have been arrested since May in 10 Southern California anti-gang sweeps.
The sweep occurred during nationwide raids against a Mexico-based drug cartel. Eimiller said the LA raids are not related.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/Officers-Swarm-South-LA-in-Gang-Crackdown-65523132.html
---------------------
More than 45 people had been arrested by 7 a.m. Thursday in a major gang crackdown in South LA.
Hundreds of police officers and federal agents served warrants on the Rolling 40s. The gang has a "vice grip" on the neighborhood, according to police.
Authorities said the operation involves about 1,100 law enforcement agents. They plan to serve warrants for 75 individuals.
Authorities set up a booking area in a parking lot in Exposition Park.
Gang Crackdown in South LA
They have a vise grip on the neighborhood, and we are going to release that grip this morning," LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said.
The operation is part of a 16-month investigation.
Neighborhoods in which the warrants were served included Crenshaw, Jefferson Park, West Adams, Baldwin Village, University Park, Athens Park, Gramercy Park and Hyde Park.
Families get to raise their children, send the kids to school, without as much fear involving this particular street gang. ... The communities are held hostage, in a sense," Albanese said.
The FBI's Laura Eimiller said more than 500 people have been arrested since May in 10 Southern California anti-gang sweeps.
The sweep occurred during nationwide raids against a Mexico-based drug cartel. Eimiller said the LA raids are not related.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/Officers-Swarm-South-LA-in-Gang-Crackdown-65523132.html
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Modern man a wimp, says anthropologist
By John Mehaffey
LONDON (Reuters) - Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 meters record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions.
Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood.
Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle.
These and other eye-catching claims are detailed in a book by Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister entitled "Manthropology" and provocatively sub-titled "The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male."
McAllister sets out his stall in the opening sentence of the prologue.
"If you're reading this then you -- or the male you have bought it for -- are the worst man in history.
"No ifs, no buts -- the worst man, period...As a class we are in fact the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet."
Delving into a wide range of source material McAllister finds evidence he believes proves that modern man is inferior to his predecessors in, among other fields, the basic Olympic athletics disciplines of running and jumping.
His conclusions about the speed of Australian aboriginals 20,000 years ago are based on a set of footprints, preserved in a fossilized claypan lake bed, of six men chasing prey.
FLEET-FOOTED ABORIGINALS
An analysis of the footsteps of one of the men, dubbed T8, shows he reached speeds of 37 kph on a soft, muddy lake edge. Bolt, by comparison, reached a top speed of 42 kph during his then world 100 meters record of 9.69 seconds at last year's Beijing Olympics.
In an interview in the English university town of Cambridge where he was temporarily resident, McAllister said that, with modern training, spiked shoes and rubberized tracks, aboriginal hunters might have reached speeds of 45 kph.
"We can assume they are running close to their maximum if they are chasing an animal," he said.
"But if they can do that speed of 37 kph on very soft ground I suspect there is a strong chance they would have outdone Usain Bolt if they had all the advantages that he does.
"We can tell that T8 is accelerating toward the end of his tracks."
McAllister said it was probable that any number of T8's contemporaries could have run as fast.
"We have to remember too how incredibly rare these fossilizations are," he said. "What are the odds that you would get the fastest runner in Australia at that particular time in that particular place in such a way that was going to be preserved?"
Turning to the high jump, McAllister said photographs taken by a German anthropologist showed young men jumping heights of up to 2.52 meters in the early years of last century.
STARK DECLINE
"It was an initiation ritual, everybody had to do it. They had to be able to jump their own height to progress to manhood," he said.
"It was something they did all the time and they lived very active lives from a very early age. They developed very phenomenal abilities in jumping. They were jumping from boyhood onwards to prove themselves."
McAllister said a Neanderthal woman had 10 percent more muscle bulk than modern European man. Trained to capacity she would have reached 90 percent of Schwarzenegger's bulk at his peak in the 1970s.
"But because of the quirk of her physiology, with a much shorter lower arm, she would slam him to the table without a problem," he said.
Manthropology abounds with other examples:
* Roman legions completed more than one-and-a-half marathons a day carrying more than half their body weight in equipment.
* Athens employed 30,000 rowers who could all exceed the achievements of modern oarsmen.
* Australian aboriginals threw a hardwood spear 110 meters or more (the current world javelin record is 98.48).
McAllister said it was difficult to equate the ancient spear with the modern javelin but added: "Given other evidence of Aboriginal man's superb athleticism you'd have to wonder whether they couldn't have taken out every modern javelin event they entered."
Why the decline?
"We are so inactive these days and have been since the industrial revolution really kicked into gear," McAllister replied. "These people were much more robust than we were.
"We don't see that because we convert to what things were like about 30 years ago. There's been such a stark improvement in times, technique has improved out of sight, times and heights have all improved vastly since then but if you go back further it's a different story.
"At the start of the industrial revolution there are statistics about how much harder people worked then.
"The human body is very plastic and it responds to stress. We have lost 40 percent of the shafts of our long bones because we have much less of a muscular load placed upon them these days.
"We are simply not exposed to the same loads or challenges that people were in the ancient past and even in the recent past so our bodies haven't developed. Even the level of training that we do, our elite athletes, doesn't come close to replicating that.
"We wouldn't want to go back to the brutality of those days but there are some things we would do well to profit from."
Monday, October 19, 2009
Quinceaneras often symbolize family's hard work, success
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- From the custom-made, hand-beaded white dress to silver-studded high-heeled shoes, diamond jewelry and tiara, Jenny Ferro is preparing for a day she's dreamed about since she was 3 years old.
Marlene Ferro, left, who emigrated from Cuba, says Jenny's quinceanera was a gift to both of them.
"I'm really excited," says Jenny, eagerly nodding her head. "Really, really, a lot!"
She isn't getting married. The 15-year-old is preparing for her quinceañera, a coming-of-age ritual in Latin culture, marking a young girl's entrance into womanhood. The centuries-old tradition began as a ceremony to introduce girls to society on their 15th birthday and signified that they were ready for marriage. Today, many quinceañeras have become much more elaborate.
Jenny and her mother, Marlene Ferro, have worked out every detail of the party well in advance, from the rehearsal to the reception to the flower girl and the music. The theme of the party is bedazzled.
First, there is the dress, which Marlene had designed specially for her daughter. It cost about $800. Then there are the shoes, high-heeled and silver to match the dress. During the party, the high heels will be ceremoniously slipped onto her feet to replace her flat shoes -- a symbolic transition of her journey from childhood to womanhood. Soledad O'Brien takes a look at Jenny's dress, shoes and photos »
"It makes her look like a princess," gushes Marlene Ferro.
Quinceañeras are becoming increasingly popular in the United States. One reason for their popularity is a greater acceptance of Latin culture in America, according to Michele Salcedo, author of "Quinceañera!" a comprehensive guide to the celebration.
'Latino in America'
The Latino population is set to nearly triple by 2050. CNN's Soledad O'Brien journeys into the homes and hearts of a group destined to change the U.S. Witness the evolution of a country as Latinos change America and America changes Latinos.
"The 15th birthday, culturally, is a milestone. It doesn't have to be celebrated with a party at all, but it is generally marked by something quite special," Salcedo says.
Experts believe the quinceañera is rooted in Mayan, Aztec and European traditions. Today, many coming-of-age ceremonies resemble lavish "Sweet 16" celebrations. Beyond the elaborate apparel, food and festivities, modern quinceañeras often feature a court of 15 people, typically consisting of family and friends. As the event continues to grow in popularity, the makeup of the court has also changed.
"It has gone beyond Latinos, so that a lot of Latino girls will have not only family members in court but they will reach out to non-Latino friends," says Salcedo. "So it's a way of reaching out and extending social ties and bringing people in who might not otherwise have an opportunity to know a Latino family and to know the culture."
Family plays the largest role in the quinceañera, leading up to and during the party. Mothers, fathers, grandparents and godparents can spend years preparing a night to remember for the young girl. The tradition is just as important to the family as it is to the young woman. The large, extravagant celebrations often symbolize a family's hard work and success. How has America changed Latinos?
Marlene Ferro, who emigrated from Cuba as a child with her parents, says Jenny's quinceañera was a gift to both of them. The 43-year-old, single mother of three, saved for years and estimates that she spent at least $20,000 on her daughter's quinceañera.
"I was able to accomplish something that I had been looking forward to for 15 years," says Marlene Ferro.
The parties can be as big and expensive as a family can imagine and costs can escalate into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to Salcedo. She recommends that families manage expectations before the party planning even begins. iReporter Alexis Fernandez's quinceañera was a big event in Alaska
"Sometimes people go way overboard and [spend] much more on the celebration than they can afford and that's the downside of the quinceañera," says Salcedo. "Because when it's done right it can be a beautiful family celebration and a celebration of a milestone that a young girl goes through."
Quinceañeras have changed over the years. Even though her tiara was taller than her daughter's, Marlene says her quinceañera was simple. It was a small gathering at her sister's apartment with family and friends. She wore borrowed jewelry from a family member, had a homemade cake and danced with her father. Marlene Ferro's 15th birthday present was a telephone in her bedroom.
"I didn't have a big quince party. I chose to have a small party with my friends," she remembers. "My dress was really easy ... I didn't have an option. It was this one or that one. Now, we give our kids the option." iReporter Diamond Ramirez's mother, grandmother never had quinceañeras
There's a spiritual element to these celebrations as well, says Salcedo. The church plays a role in helping to prepare teenage girls for this transition to womanhood. Ceremonies and classes before the coming-of-age celebration teach the young women that with adulthood come certain responsibilities, both physical and spiritual.
"When it's done in the spirit that it probably should be, the girl has certain responsibilities and by the end of the process, she's met them and she has showed her mother that she can, in fact, be responsible and she does acquire ... a bit more maturity then she [had] before," says Salcedo.
As the celebrations become more popular in the United States, they also offer an opportunity for more Americans to participate.
"It's a way to push back a lot of the negativity that a lot of Latinos feel is directed at Latinos," says Salcedo. "It is a way for people who have recently arrived, or maybe not so recently arrived, to say 'I have done well here' ... I'm throwing this party for my daughter and I'm inviting all of you to partake of my generosity so that you can see exactly how well we've done."
Moscow Mayor Promises a Winter Without Snow
By SIMON SHUSTER / MOSCOW Simon Shuster / Moscow
Sat Oct 17, 9:15 am ET
Pigs still can't fly, but this winter, the mayor of Moscow promises to keep it from snowing. For just a few million dollars, the mayor's office will hire the Russian Air Force to spray a fine chemical mist over the clouds before they reach the capital, forcing them to dump their snow outside the city. Authorities say this will be a boon for Moscow, which is typically covered with a blanket of snow from November to March. Road crews won't need to constantly clear the streets, and traffic - and quality of life - will undoubtedly improve.
The idea came from Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who is no stranger to playing God. In 2002, he spearheaded a project to reverse the flow of the vast River Ob through Siberia to help irrigate the country's parched Central Asian neighbors. Although that idea hasn't exactly turned out as planned - scientists have said it's not feasible - this time, Luzhkov says, there's no way he can fail. (See TIME's photo-essay "Vladimir Putin: Action Figure.")
Controlling the weather in Moscow is nothing new, he says. Ahead of the two main holidays celebrated in the city each year - Victory Day in May and City Day in September - the often cash-strapped air force is paid to make sure that it doesn't, well, rain on the parades. With a city budget of $40 billion a year (larger than New York City's budget), Moscow can easily afford the $2-3 million price tag to keep the skies blue as spectators watch the tanks and rocket launchers roll along Red Square. Now there's a new challenge for the air force: Moscow's notorious blizzards.
"You know how every year on City Day and Victory Day we create the weather?" Luzhkov asked a group of farmers outside Moscow in September, according to Russian media reports. "Well, we should do the same with the snow! Then outside Moscow there will be more moisture, a bigger harvest, while for us it won't snow as much. It will make financial sense." (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)
The plan was unsurprisingly rubber-stamped this week by the Moscow City Council, which is dominated by Luzhkov's supporters. Then the city's Department of Housing and Public Works described how it would work. The air force will use cement powder, dry ice or silver iodide to spray the clouds from Nov. 15 to March 15 - and only to prevent "very big and serious snow" from falling on the city, said Andrei Tsybin, the head of the department. This could mean that a few flakes will manage to slip through the cracks. Tsybin estimated that the total cost of keeping the storms at bay would be $6 million this winter, roughly half the amount Moscow normally spends to clear the streets of snow.
So far the main objection to the plan has come from Moscow's suburbs, which will likely be inundated with snow if the plan goes forward. Alla Kachan, the Moscow region's ecology minister, said the proposal still needs to be assessed by environmental experts and discussed with the people living in the area before Luzhkov can enact it. "The citizens of the region have some concerns. We have received lots of messages," she told the RIA news agency. (Read TIME's 1991 article "The End of the U.S.S.R.")
With only a few weeks left before winter comes, environmentalists will have to work fast to keep Luzhkov from implementing his zaniest plan to date - and to stop the first snowflakes from wafting down to the city streets.
Sat Oct 17, 9:15 am ET
Pigs still can't fly, but this winter, the mayor of Moscow promises to keep it from snowing. For just a few million dollars, the mayor's office will hire the Russian Air Force to spray a fine chemical mist over the clouds before they reach the capital, forcing them to dump their snow outside the city. Authorities say this will be a boon for Moscow, which is typically covered with a blanket of snow from November to March. Road crews won't need to constantly clear the streets, and traffic - and quality of life - will undoubtedly improve.
The idea came from Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who is no stranger to playing God. In 2002, he spearheaded a project to reverse the flow of the vast River Ob through Siberia to help irrigate the country's parched Central Asian neighbors. Although that idea hasn't exactly turned out as planned - scientists have said it's not feasible - this time, Luzhkov says, there's no way he can fail. (See TIME's photo-essay "Vladimir Putin: Action Figure.")
Controlling the weather in Moscow is nothing new, he says. Ahead of the two main holidays celebrated in the city each year - Victory Day in May and City Day in September - the often cash-strapped air force is paid to make sure that it doesn't, well, rain on the parades. With a city budget of $40 billion a year (larger than New York City's budget), Moscow can easily afford the $2-3 million price tag to keep the skies blue as spectators watch the tanks and rocket launchers roll along Red Square. Now there's a new challenge for the air force: Moscow's notorious blizzards.
"You know how every year on City Day and Victory Day we create the weather?" Luzhkov asked a group of farmers outside Moscow in September, according to Russian media reports. "Well, we should do the same with the snow! Then outside Moscow there will be more moisture, a bigger harvest, while for us it won't snow as much. It will make financial sense." (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)
The plan was unsurprisingly rubber-stamped this week by the Moscow City Council, which is dominated by Luzhkov's supporters. Then the city's Department of Housing and Public Works described how it would work. The air force will use cement powder, dry ice or silver iodide to spray the clouds from Nov. 15 to March 15 - and only to prevent "very big and serious snow" from falling on the city, said Andrei Tsybin, the head of the department. This could mean that a few flakes will manage to slip through the cracks. Tsybin estimated that the total cost of keeping the storms at bay would be $6 million this winter, roughly half the amount Moscow normally spends to clear the streets of snow.
So far the main objection to the plan has come from Moscow's suburbs, which will likely be inundated with snow if the plan goes forward. Alla Kachan, the Moscow region's ecology minister, said the proposal still needs to be assessed by environmental experts and discussed with the people living in the area before Luzhkov can enact it. "The citizens of the region have some concerns. We have received lots of messages," she told the RIA news agency. (Read TIME's 1991 article "The End of the U.S.S.R.")
With only a few weeks left before winter comes, environmentalists will have to work fast to keep Luzhkov from implementing his zaniest plan to date - and to stop the first snowflakes from wafting down to the city streets.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Nobel Prize for Pres. Obama
A Decadent Nobel
A prize for soft moralism.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
So Donald Rumsfeld was right about Old Europe.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has taken it in the neck for awarding this year's Peace Prize to a nine-month old American presidency. There's been much mockery of pencil-necked Norwegian academics in faraway Oslo. This is unfair.
The committee said it chose Barack Obama for his "vision of . . . a world without nuclear weapons" and for "meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting." I'd say that completes the argument over old and new Europe. This is a Nobel of decadence.
Let's be clear. This decadence isn't primarily about Roman Polanski or Silvio Berlusconi's playboy club or French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand's adventures in Thailand. Though these are not irrelevant.
This Nobel is about political decadence.
"Decadence," an enduring word, emerged from the Latin "de-cadere," which means "to fall down." Decadence stripped bare means decay.
Daniel Henninger discusses the Norwegian committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama and what it says about Europe.
•Podcast The unanswered question at the center of this odd Nobel is whether Barack Obama admires Old Europe for the same reasons it admires him.
When it was a vibrant garden of ideas, Europe gave the world more good things than one can count. Then it discovered the pleasures of the welfare state.
Old Europe now lives in a world of unpayable public pension obligations, weak job creation for its youngest workers, below-replacement birth rates, fat agricultural subsidies for farms dating to the Middle Ages, high taxes to pay for the public high-life, and history's most crucial proof of decay—the inability to finance one's armies. Only five of the 28 nations in NATO (the U.K., France, Turkey, Greece and Spain) achieve the minimum defense-spending benchmark of 2% of GDP.
The effect of arriving at a state of political decadence, of no longer being able to rise in the world, is that many people increasingly discover that soft moralism is a more congenial pastime than producing answers for the hard questions. As when David Cameron, the Tory leader and likely next British prime minister wonders: "The insatiable consumption and materialism of the past decade; has it made us happier or more fulfilled?"
This isn't to say that soft moralism is about nothing. But when matters such as climate change become life's primary concerns, it means one is going to spend more time preaching, which is easy, than doing, which is hard. One thinks of Nobelist Al Gore's unstoppable sermons.
Among the hardest questions Europe faced after World War II was the placement of anti-Soviet Pershing missiles on Europe's soil in 1983. Led by Helmut Kohl and Maggie Thatcher, Europe did something hard: It overcame its pacifists. A decade later, with the siege of Sarajevo, old Europe came to understand that making the hardest decisions was now beyond its reach.
Current hard questions include Pakistan and Afghanistan. Darfur is a hard question. Where to hold captured terrorists is a hard question.
Americans heard often the past four years how much Europe "hated" us because of that most complex of hard questions, the Iraq war. Unpopular wars cause bad feelings to be sure, but past some point Europe's antipathy toward the U.S. over Iraq began to sound a lot like moralistic decadence. It is a neurotic resentment of a superpower merely because it possesses the resources to do something Europe can no longer do, for good or ill.
Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland:
What we are in the process of discovering is just how much President Obama's worldview coincides with that of the continent that claims to have seen itself reflected in him and its Peace Prize.
Mr. Obama is at a crossroads in his presidency. As George W. Bush departed the White House, he said his successor would one day arrive at the need to make a decision that made clear the reality of being the American president. That moment has arrived. It is the pending troop-deployment for Afghanistan, a very hard decision.
After that, Mr. Obama will go to Oslo Dec. 10 to receive the Prize itself. That will occur in the middle of the Dec. 7-18 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, whose goal is among the explicit reasons why Mr. Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
Between Afghanistan and Oslo, we're going to get some clarity about the Obama presidency.
Perhaps the most intriguing onlooker to this education is European Nicolas Sarkozy. On his good days, France's president seems aware of the political and economic decay he has inherited. So it was striking at the United Nations last month when Mr. Sarkozy said that Mr. Obama "dreams of a world without nuclear arms." Then, describing Iran's nuclear threat, he said, "At a certain moment hard facts will force us to make decisions."
By "us" he means that the U.S. must lead. In the West, only the U.S. president can still make decisions based on hard facts rather than recede into soft moralism. The day that is no longer true, the U.S. will finally deserve a decadent Nobel.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574473543586270418.html#printMode
A prize for soft moralism.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
So Donald Rumsfeld was right about Old Europe.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has taken it in the neck for awarding this year's Peace Prize to a nine-month old American presidency. There's been much mockery of pencil-necked Norwegian academics in faraway Oslo. This is unfair.
The committee said it chose Barack Obama for his "vision of . . . a world without nuclear weapons" and for "meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting." I'd say that completes the argument over old and new Europe. This is a Nobel of decadence.
Let's be clear. This decadence isn't primarily about Roman Polanski or Silvio Berlusconi's playboy club or French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand's adventures in Thailand. Though these are not irrelevant.
This Nobel is about political decadence.
"Decadence," an enduring word, emerged from the Latin "de-cadere," which means "to fall down." Decadence stripped bare means decay.
Daniel Henninger discusses the Norwegian committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama and what it says about Europe.
•Podcast The unanswered question at the center of this odd Nobel is whether Barack Obama admires Old Europe for the same reasons it admires him.
When it was a vibrant garden of ideas, Europe gave the world more good things than one can count. Then it discovered the pleasures of the welfare state.
Old Europe now lives in a world of unpayable public pension obligations, weak job creation for its youngest workers, below-replacement birth rates, fat agricultural subsidies for farms dating to the Middle Ages, high taxes to pay for the public high-life, and history's most crucial proof of decay—the inability to finance one's armies. Only five of the 28 nations in NATO (the U.K., France, Turkey, Greece and Spain) achieve the minimum defense-spending benchmark of 2% of GDP.
The effect of arriving at a state of political decadence, of no longer being able to rise in the world, is that many people increasingly discover that soft moralism is a more congenial pastime than producing answers for the hard questions. As when David Cameron, the Tory leader and likely next British prime minister wonders: "The insatiable consumption and materialism of the past decade; has it made us happier or more fulfilled?"
This isn't to say that soft moralism is about nothing. But when matters such as climate change become life's primary concerns, it means one is going to spend more time preaching, which is easy, than doing, which is hard. One thinks of Nobelist Al Gore's unstoppable sermons.
Among the hardest questions Europe faced after World War II was the placement of anti-Soviet Pershing missiles on Europe's soil in 1983. Led by Helmut Kohl and Maggie Thatcher, Europe did something hard: It overcame its pacifists. A decade later, with the siege of Sarajevo, old Europe came to understand that making the hardest decisions was now beyond its reach.
Current hard questions include Pakistan and Afghanistan. Darfur is a hard question. Where to hold captured terrorists is a hard question.
Americans heard often the past four years how much Europe "hated" us because of that most complex of hard questions, the Iraq war. Unpopular wars cause bad feelings to be sure, but past some point Europe's antipathy toward the U.S. over Iraq began to sound a lot like moralistic decadence. It is a neurotic resentment of a superpower merely because it possesses the resources to do something Europe can no longer do, for good or ill.
Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland:
What we are in the process of discovering is just how much President Obama's worldview coincides with that of the continent that claims to have seen itself reflected in him and its Peace Prize.
Mr. Obama is at a crossroads in his presidency. As George W. Bush departed the White House, he said his successor would one day arrive at the need to make a decision that made clear the reality of being the American president. That moment has arrived. It is the pending troop-deployment for Afghanistan, a very hard decision.
After that, Mr. Obama will go to Oslo Dec. 10 to receive the Prize itself. That will occur in the middle of the Dec. 7-18 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, whose goal is among the explicit reasons why Mr. Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
Between Afghanistan and Oslo, we're going to get some clarity about the Obama presidency.
Perhaps the most intriguing onlooker to this education is European Nicolas Sarkozy. On his good days, France's president seems aware of the political and economic decay he has inherited. So it was striking at the United Nations last month when Mr. Sarkozy said that Mr. Obama "dreams of a world without nuclear arms." Then, describing Iran's nuclear threat, he said, "At a certain moment hard facts will force us to make decisions."
By "us" he means that the U.S. must lead. In the West, only the U.S. president can still make decisions based on hard facts rather than recede into soft moralism. The day that is no longer true, the U.S. will finally deserve a decadent Nobel.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574473543586270418.html#printMode
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
HOMEWORK IS FUN
HOMEWORK DUE FRIDAY: May be typed or handwritten.
Based on Quick Access, what’s the difference between a run-on and a comma splice?
Where do you find the information on run-ons in the Quick Access text?
Read the section on run-ons.
In one sentence, tell me what is the best way to detect a run-on?
Based on Quick Access, what’s the difference between a run-on and a comma splice?
Where do you find the information on run-ons in the Quick Access text?
Read the section on run-ons.
In one sentence, tell me what is the best way to detect a run-on?
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Don't Moon the Train
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German man mooning at railway staff in a departing train got his trousers caught in a carriage door and ended up being dragged half naked along the platform, out of the station and onto the tracks.
The 22-year-old journalism student shoved his backside against the window of a low-slung double-decker train when staff forced him off in Lauenbrueck for traveling without a ticket, a spokesman for police in the northern city of Bremen said.
"It's a miracle he wasn't badly hurt," the spokesman said on Monday. "This sort of thing can end up killing you."
Instead, dangling by his trousers, the man got pulled along for about 200 meters, all the while managing to keep his legs away from the wheels of the train.
The ordeal ended when a passenger pulled the emergency brake. Rescues services were called in, causing rail services between Bremen and Hamburg to be suspended for over an hour, delaying 23 trains.
The man -- unharmed except for cuts and bruises -- now faces charges of dangerous interference in rail transport, insulting the train staff, and may face sizeable a compensation claim for the delays he caused, police said.
"He was full of remorse when I talked to him," the spokesman said. "And he advised others not to try the same thing."
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Louise Ireland)
The 22-year-old journalism student shoved his backside against the window of a low-slung double-decker train when staff forced him off in Lauenbrueck for traveling without a ticket, a spokesman for police in the northern city of Bremen said.
"It's a miracle he wasn't badly hurt," the spokesman said on Monday. "This sort of thing can end up killing you."
Instead, dangling by his trousers, the man got pulled along for about 200 meters, all the while managing to keep his legs away from the wheels of the train.
The ordeal ended when a passenger pulled the emergency brake. Rescues services were called in, causing rail services between Bremen and Hamburg to be suspended for over an hour, delaying 23 trains.
The man -- unharmed except for cuts and bruises -- now faces charges of dangerous interference in rail transport, insulting the train staff, and may face sizeable a compensation claim for the delays he caused, police said.
"He was full of remorse when I talked to him," the spokesman said. "And he advised others not to try the same thing."
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Monday, October 12, 2009
Vegetarian Spider
A spider that dines almost exclusively on plants has been described by scientists.
It is the first-known predominantly vegetarian spider; all of the other known 40,000 spider species are thought to be mainly carnivorous.
Bagheera kiplingi, which is found in Central America and Mexico, bucks the meat-eating trend by feasting on acacia plants.
The research is published in the journal Current Biology.
The jumping arachnid, which is 5-6mm long, has developed a taste for the tips of the acacia plants - known as Beltian bodies - which are packed full of protein.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
What's your opinion on this issue?
Pot legalization gains momentum in California
By MARCUS WOHLSEN (AP) – 18 hours ago
SAN FRANCISCO — Marijuana advocates are gathering signatures to get at least three pot-legalization measures on the ballot in 2010 in California, setting up what could be a groundbreaking clash with the federal government over U.S. drug policy.
At least one poll shows voters would support lifting the pot prohibition, which would make the state of 40 million the first in the nation to legalize marijuana.
Such action would also send the state into a headlong conflict with the U.S. government while raising questions about how federal law enforcement could enforce its drug laws in the face of a massive government-sanctioned pot industry.
The state already has a thriving marijuana trade, thanks to a first-of-its-kind 1996 ballot measure that allowed people to smoke pot for medical purposes. But full legalization could turn medical marijuana dispensaries into all-purpose pot stores, and the open sale of joints could become commonplace on mom-and-pop liquor store counters in liberal locales like Oakland and Santa Cruz.
Under federal law, marijuana is illegal, period. After overseeing a series of raids that destroyed more than 300,000 marijuana plants in California's Sierra Nevada foothills this summer, federal drug czar Gil Kerlikowske proclaimed, "Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine."
The U.S. Supreme Court also has ruled that federal law enforcement agents have the right to crack down even on marijuana users and distributors who are in compliance with California's medical marijuana law.
But some legal scholars and policy analysts say the government will not be able to require California to help in enforcing the federal marijuana ban if the state legalizes the drug.
Without assistance from the state's legions of narcotics officers, they say, federal agents could do little to curb marijuana in California.
"Even though that federal ban is still in place and the federal government can enforce it, it doesn't mean the states have to follow suit," said Robert Mikos, a Vanderbilt University law professor who recently published a paper about the issue.
Nothing can stop federal anti-drug agents from making marijuana arrests, even if Californians legalize pot, he said. However, the U.S. government cannot pass a law requiring local and state police, sheriff's departments or state narcotics enforcers to help.
That is significant, because nearly all arrests for marijuana crimes are made at the state level. Of more than 847,000 marijuana-related arrests in 2008, for example, just over 6,300 suspects were booked by federal law enforcement, or fewer than 1 percent.
State marijuana bans have allowed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to focus on big cases, said Rosalie Pacula, director of drug policy research at the Rand Corp.
"It's only something the feds are going to be concerned about if you're growing tons of pot," Pacula said. For anything less, she said, "they don't have the resources to waste on it."
In a typical recent prosecution, 29-year-old Luke Scarmazzo was sentenced to nearly 22 years and co-defendant Ricardo Ruiz Montes to 20 years in federal prison for drug trafficking through a medical marijuana dispensary in Modesto.
At his bond hearing, prosecutors showed a rap video in which Scarmazzo boasts about his successful marijuana business, taunts federal authorities and carries cardboard boxes filled with cash. The DEA said the pair made more than $4.5 million in marijuana sales in less than two years.
The DEA would not speculate on the effects of any decision by California to legalize pot. "Marijuana is illegal under federal law and DEA will continue to attack large-scale drug trafficking organizations at every level," spokeswoman Dawn Dearden said.
The most conservative of the three ballot measures would only legalize possession of up to one ounce of pot for personal use by adults 21 and older — an amount that already under state law can only result at most in a $100 fine.
The proposal would also allow anyone to grow a plot of marijuana up to 5 feet-by-5 feet on their private property. The size, Pacula said, seems specifically designed to keep the total number of plants grown below 100, the threshold for DEA attention.
The greatest potential for conflict with the U.S. government would likely come from the provision that would give local governments the power to decide city-by-city whether to allow pot sales.
Hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries across the state already operate openly with only modest federal interference. If recreational marijuana became legal, these businesses could operate without requiring their customers to qualify as patients.
Any business that grew bigger than the already typical storefront shops, however, would probably be too tempting a target for federal prosecution, experts said.
Even if Washington could no longer count on California to keep pot off its own streets, Congress or the Obama administration could try to coerce cooperation by withholding federal funds.
But with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement earlier this year that the Justice Department would defer to state laws on marijuana, the federal response to possible legalization remains unclear.
Doug Richardson, a spokesman for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the office is in the process of re-evaluating its policies on marijuana and other drugs.
Richardson said the office under Obama was pursuing a "more comprehensive" approach than the previous administration, with emphasis on prevention and treatment as well as law enforcement.
"We're trying to base stuff on the facts, the evidence and the science," he said, "not some particular prejudice somebody brings to the table."
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Ummm, what should be the punishment for this?
Ala. woman lets daughter ride in box on top of van
Mon Oct 5, 9:07 pm ET
ALBERTVILLE, Ala. – An Alabama woman has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child after police say she let her daughter ride in a cardboard box on top of their van. Albertville Police spokesman Sgt. Jamie Smith said the 37-year-old woman was arrested Sunday after police received a call about a minivan on a state highway with a child riding on top.
Smith said the woman told police the box was too big to go inside the van, and that her daughter was inside the box to hold it down.
Smith said the mother told officers it was safe because she had the box secured to the van with a clothes hanger.
The 13-year-old daughter wasn't harmed and was turned over to a relative. A jail worker said the mother was out on bond Monday.
___
Information from: The Huntsville Times, http://www.al.com/hsvtimes/hsv.html
Mon Oct 5, 9:07 pm ET
ALBERTVILLE, Ala. – An Alabama woman has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child after police say she let her daughter ride in a cardboard box on top of their van. Albertville Police spokesman Sgt. Jamie Smith said the 37-year-old woman was arrested Sunday after police received a call about a minivan on a state highway with a child riding on top.
Smith said the woman told police the box was too big to go inside the van, and that her daughter was inside the box to hold it down.
Smith said the mother told officers it was safe because she had the box secured to the van with a clothes hanger.
The 13-year-old daughter wasn't harmed and was turned over to a relative. A jail worker said the mother was out on bond Monday.
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Information from: The Huntsville Times, http://www.al.com/hsvtimes/hsv.html
Monday, October 5, 2009
UNHEARD OF!!! EXTRA CREDIT? ONE DAY AND ONE DAY ONLY!!!
...okay, it's actually available for a few days, but you can take advantage of this opportunity to get some extra credit on the restaurant review paper. How might one do this, you wonder? Simple. Go into the Oasis this week and ask them to help you with one problem you had on the RR essay. You do not need to even bring the paper with you. If you need help with run-ons, tell them the following: "I need help with run-ons." Get it? Here's what it's worth. You may receive 2% extra credit for a total of two visits and a total of 4%. Here's the catch. The visits must be completed by Friday of this week and must be on separate days. Hence, you could go in today and tomorrow. Or you might choose to go in tomorrow and Thursday. When you go into the Oasis, someone there will stamp a piece of paper and date it, verifying that you have been in for tutoring. By Friday at the beginning of class, I'll accept all Oasis stamps to verify your visits.
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