Sperm cell crashes into embryonic son (artist's conception)
June 16, 2013 - Scientists at NASA were stunned when an "unbelievably fast" sperm cell crashed into an embryonic son at 01:30 UTC this morning. Nobody at NASA anticipated the arrival of the sperm cell, which occurred during an office party at the space agency's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) Project at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"None of our monitoring satellites were able to see this coming," said Dr. Roger Pater of SORCE. "We know where it came from, and we have good reason to believe that this was a Y chromosome-bearing sperm cell. If that's the case, then the result will be an embryo with XY chromosomes. In other words, a boy."
Dr. Pater stressed that this is only speculation at this point. "We won't know for six weeks into the gestation, as the fetus. It's about then that we'll see sexually specific male or female characteristics." Pater added that this is not one of NASA's areas of expertise. "I'm just a physicist," he said, "not a real doctor."
The unexpected sperm cell hit an egg contained within a female employee of NASA. Witnesses at the party say that she and her husband snuck off to an empty office in another part of the building where the office party was taking place. "They were gone for about 45 minutes," said one of the party attendees. "That's long enough to, well, you know. So like, this wasn't totally unexpected if you think about it."
June 15, 2013 - A quiet residential neighborhood in Birmingham, England was shaken by a multiple stabbing incident Saturday night. The incident seems to have nothing to do with terrorism or hate crimes. "Four men including a police officer have been taken to hospital after being stabbed in a mosque in Birmingham,"reports Sky News tonight. "The officer was stabbed as he arrived at a mosque in Birmingham where three people had been attacked by a knifeman." Sky News says that all four men are hospitalized and a 32-year old man was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.
Police tape off Washwood Heath Muslim Centre, 15 June
Photo: Sky News
UPDATE, 16 June: "Two worshippers, a 28-year-old man who suffered multiple stab wounds and a 36-year-old man who suffered a single stab wound to the thigh, were also being treated in hospital," reports The Guardian UK. "Another worshipper suffered a hand injury but did not need hospital treatment. All were given first aid at the scene by police officers and worshippers, who included an off-duty surgeon." The Guardian also reports that attacker's motivation for Saturday's attack are not known, "but there was no evidence it was a hate crime or linked to any other incidents." The Guardian says that the 32-year-old murder suspect "was transferred to a secure mental health facility on Sunday after he was deemed unfit to be interviewed by police."
The mosque is the Washwood Heath Muslim Centre at 790-792 Washwood Heath Road, Ward End, Birmingham, West Midlands. (See map and photo.) Listed at the same address is a school called Madrasah Qasim ul Uloom and a majid called Anwar-ul-Madina.
The West Midlands Police press release said that "Officers arrived at the incident and whilst the suspect was being detained, one police officer also suffered stab wounds. The three men and the male police constable were taken to hospital; all four men are currently described as being in a stable condition and their injuries are not believed to be life threatening. The man was arrested at the mosque on suspicion of attempt murder and is currently in custody. Officers are conducting patrols in the area in a bid to reassure local people and a cordon is in place whilst investigations continue at this time."
Ward End is an area of Birmingham, England. It covers the area between Saltley, Hodge Hill and Stechford and includes Ward End Park, according to Wikipedia, which also notes that "there are a large number of mosques, located on Ward End, Washwood Heath, Hodge Hill and Alum Rock Road or nearby." The UK Mosque Searcher lists nine mosques in Ward End.
June 14, 2013 - A friend on Facebook, who I know to be a true patriot, wrote today that America has become "fully despotic." I disagree with that. Some of will disagree with me, of course. What I mean to say in this post is that, although the U.S. certainly moves toward despotism, it has not yet become "fully despotic." However, my main point is that it's dangerous for conservatives to insist that it has become completely despotic. Not only does this spread untruth, it has the unintentional effect, I believe, of psychological propaganda that works against conservatives. Let me explain...
DANGEROUS HYPERBOLE: Did George Orwell, in his novel "1984,"
really get everything right? If you've read 1984 you know that America
in 2013 is not Ingsoc 1984. So did Orwell get it wrong?
Not really, because "1984" was a work of fiction
and Orwell never meant it as a hard prediction of what will be,
but of what could be. Don't underestimate your enemy, but
also don't exaggerate him into something bigger than he is.
Some politicians, mostly Democrats, disdain the Constitution and try to do end runs around it, the government is still bound by it. Imperfectly, yes, but my point is that the government is still for the most part restricted by the Constitution.
Many people accuse Obama of being an absolute dictator. He might wish that he had absolute power, but if he did, he would not be constantly frustrated by Republicans and even by some of his fellow Democrats. This not a defense of Obama. It is a statement of truth. The United States has no "ruler." We have no king, no shah, no pharaoh, no czar. We have nobody who holds absolute power. The U.S. Constitution set the stage for Congress to check the President. Thanks to the inherent rivalry in our two-party political system, nobody will have absolute power in the U.S. without first staging a successful coup d'etat. Unless I missed that headline, it hasn't happened. If this nation was "fully despotic," you would not be reading this blog post because I would not have been able to write it from the prison camp that I would have been sent to for being a harsh critic of the Obama Administration.
Definition of despotism (Oxford Dictionary): the exercise of absolute power, especially in a cruel and oppressive way: the King’s arbitrary despotism a country or political system where the ruler holds absolute power.
Synonyms for "despotism" include dictatorship, absolutism, authoritarianism, Caesarism, monocracy, one-man rule, shogunate, Stalinism, totalitarianism, tyranny, autocracy, autarchy.
Another definition (Infoplease thesaurus): form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)
All too often, on Facebook, Twitter and conservative blogs, we see frightening images and plenty of exaggerated reports that are intended to make us believe that the United States is a prison nation. It's all very depressing, and to some people it can be disheartening.
But those are untruths and exaggerations. I hesitate to call them lies because that implies intentionally telling an untruth. Instead, I attribute the spreading of these panicked untruths to ignorance, intellectual laziness, a desire to shock others, gullibility and a lack of critical thinking. (Those of you who are guilty of those, by the way, will simply not understand what I just said. In fact, you probably have even read this far, have thrown up your hands, assumed I am a commie, and proven that you are ignorant, intellectually lazy, gullible and lack the ability of critical thinking.)
The image above at the top of this post says, falsely, that the only thing George Orwell got wrong in "1984" was the year. To anybody who has read 1984, or seen the movie, and understood it, that's nonsense. 1984 depicted a completely totalitarian (fully despotic) society. It was a cautionary tale of what could be, not a prediction of what would be.
There is danger in publishing such images and stories. It is untruth, which Orwell himself warned against. It is exactly the same kind of overblown hysteria that we conservatives mocked when the Left did it during the George W. Bush years. The greatest danger, I believe, is that such exaggerations of "complete despotism" have a demoralizing effect on many conservatives and our fellow Americans. It's a hope killer. For some, it kills motivation by instilling a sense of defeat. Fear mongers do us no good service by presenting exaggerations. Exaggerations, after all, are untruths. The truth, it is said, shall set you free. Exaggerations only mislead and cause you to spend energy where it is not needed, diverting you from actual problems that require your attention.
Satirical images, like this one by Tom Mannis for Chicago
News Bench, mock Obama's despotic tendencies. Images
like these are humorous, without giving the false sense
that the U.S. has gone "fully despotic."
The Left itself could not wish for a better propaganda campaign designed to drag down the Right's enthusiasm to keep fighting. In wartime, the best kind of propaganda is that which drills into the enemy's head a sense of despair. Unwittingly, many conservatives are acting as de facto propagandists for the Left. It is comparable to a general repeatedly telling his own troops that the enemy is stronger than it actually is. Many of the soldier's under that general's command would feel that there was no use in pushing on. Some might desert, others would fight less enthusiastically with an attitude of hopelessness.
Conservatives must stop passing around exaggerated reports of the U.S. becoming "just like the Third Reich." Everything from over regulation to NSA domestic spying abuses to out-of-control political correctness have us rightly angered. Even so, there is still hope, and that hope is possible because this nation has not yet become a fully despotic, tyrannical dictatorship. And, while we've not yet gone over that cliff, we still have ample opportunity to avoid that final fall into Orwell's Canyon.
"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism," said John Stuart Mill. As far as I can tell, my individuality has not yet been crushed. Is there evidence that the government is attempting to crush individuality? Yes, but they have not succeeded. Not yet, anyway.
But what about "soft despotism?" Author Paul A. Rahe, who is also a professor of history and political science at Hillsdale College. In his book "Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift - Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect" (2009) he says that those great thinkers actually anticipated the "modern liberal republic's propensity" to drift in the direction of "soft despotism," which Rahe says is "a condition that arises within a democracy when paternalistic state power expands and gradually undermines the spirit of self-government. Such an eventuality, feared by Tocqueville in the nineteenth century, has now become a reality throughout the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. So Rahe asserts, and he explains what must be done to reverse this unfortunate trend." (Watch: Video interview with Paul Rahe.)
Rahe's words only support my contention that we have not yet gone completely despotic. Don't get me wrong. The federal has become despotic in many ways. Many state governments have their own despotic tendencies. But while the government is in some ways despotic, it has not gone fully despotic. To say it has is to admit that you really do not know what despotism is. If you think America is "fully" despotic, try talking to anybody who lived through Hitler's Third Reich. Talk to anyone who lived in the Soviet Union before 1989. Try reading a history book.
I do agree with my friend that we need to "kick some ass" and push back against the dangerous trend toward despotism. We're well on the way, yes, but it is far from complete. Let's all step back a bit. By convincing ourselves that the US has gone fully Third Reich (or USSR, depending upon your preference), we actually harm the morale of many of our fellow conservatives. The global warming alarmists have caused unneeded fear and stress among many; children, it's been shown, have nightmares about a flooded planet.
Propaganda from North Korea. Except for being funnier,
this is not much different from reports of "full despotism"
by some hysterical American conservatives.
Alarmism about American already being into a complete despotic oligarchy undoubtedly has the same effect on many people, and I'd guess it might actually cause some to give up hope. We must not do that. We must try to educate our fellow conservatives and keep morale up, so that they keep the hope of preventing the country from really and truly going "fully despotic."
Look around you, folks. Do you see people being swept off the streets? Have any of your conservative neighbors been dragged out of their homes at 3:00 in the morning and thrown into an unmarked van? Are we still allowed to post anti-government statements such as this one? Can you or I still go to an airport and fly anywhere we want, or drive anywhere we want, read whatever we want? Because of the NSA PRISM news, sales of Orwell's 1984 spiked. Consider this: If the U.S. was "fully despotic," 1984 and other anti-authoritarian books would be banned.
If the fundamental transformation of America into a despotic oligarchy was actually complete, none of us would be reading this because the Internet here, as in China, would be heavily censored. It the transformation was really complete, hope would be lost. We must not lose hope. We must not fool ourselves into hopelessness.
"How close are we to living in a totalitarian dictatorship?" asks Duane V. Grassell at Patriot Post. "How close are we to Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany? Can the Socialists of the Democrat party pull off in the Republic of the United States what the Communists pulled off in Russia and what the Fascists pulled off in Germany? To see if this is possible, we should look to recent history and compare it to what we are experiencing today. To pull off a dictatorship the government in power needs three key ingredients."
The three ingredients that Grasell lists are: (1) an army of devout followers who are willing to go to any length to advance the party's agenda; (2) a weak or unwilling opposition; (3) a large portion of the population that is either apathetic or blissfully ignorant of how their government tramples on their rights.
Grassell ends his post with this: "I write this in the hope of awakening a once great nation before it's too late." I was glad to see him write that, for it goes to my point that it is not yet too late. We have not yet gone "fully despotic." Let's not say that a garage fire means the house is "fully engulfed in flames."
We have not driven off Despotism Cliff - yet. We can see the cliff ahead. It's not too late to steer away from it, or to put on the brakes. But if you believe that it's too late, if you are fooled into falsely believing that you already fell into the canyon, then all hope is lost. Keep hope, and kick some ass.
June 14, 2013 - "About 850 teachers and staffers at schools doomed to either close this month or to reboot their staffs were handed pink slips Friday afternoon, according to Chicago Public Schools," reports the Chicago Sun-Times this afternoon. It's about to get real ugly. Expect protests, and they won't be pretty.
At the 48 closing schools, 420 teachers of 1,005 total lost their jobs, plus 110 paraprofessionals and 133 bus aides and part-timers. At the five schools headed for “turnaround,” where the children remain in the building but all the adults are replaced, 192 staffers were laid off: 125 teachers, 20 paraprofessionals, 20 bus aides and part-timers and 27 clerks, custodians and security staffers.More at the Sun-Times.
And there's this from Chicagoist (my emphasis added):
Layoffs were on the mind of the Chicago Teachers Union earlier this week when CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett unveiled a five-year action plan for the school system aimed at improving education across all grades. CTU fears the evaluation pillar of the plan could result in as many as 6,000 teachers losing their jobs. While the teachers union fears the worst, additional cuts are already underway at CPS. More than $21 million in cuts are being made at the central office, administrative positions and operations programs as CPS works to close a $1 billion budget deficit. CPS previously announced $31 million in other cuts. Under school based budgeting, principals are responsible for their own staffing plans and may lay off staff at their schools as needed to meet their budgets. More at Chicagoist.
June 14, 2013 - Today is Flag Day in the USA! The late, great Johnny Cash recites a great tribute to the Stars and Stripes in this video. Here are the lyrics.
"Ragged Old Flag"
I walked through a county courthouse square, on a park bench, an old man was sittin' there. I said, "Your old court house is kinda run down. He said, "Naw, it'll do for our little town." I said, "Your old flag pole is leaned a little bit, and that's a ragged old flag you got hangin' on it."
He said, "Have a seat", and I sat down. "Is this the first time you've been to our little town" I said, "I think it is."
He said "I don't like to brag, but we're kinda proud of That Ragged Old Flag. You see, we got a little hole in that flag there, when Washington took it across the Delaware. And it got powder burned the night Francis Scott Key sat watching it, writing 'Say Can You See.' It got a rip in New Orleans, with Packingham and Jackson tugging at its seams."
"And it almost fell at the Alamo beside the Texas flag, but she waved on though. She got cut with a sword at Chancellorsville, and she got cut again at Shiloh Hill. There was Robert E. Lee and Beauregard and Bragg, And the south wind blew hard on That Ragged Old Flag." "On Flanders Field in World War One, she got a big hole from a Bertha Gun. She turned blood red in World War Two, she hung limp, and low, a time or two. She was in Korea, Vietnam, she went where she was sent by her Uncle Sam." "She waved from our ships upon the briny foam, and now they've about quit wavin' back here at home. In her own good land here, she's been abused, she's been burned, dishonored, denied an' refused." "And the government for which she stands has been scandalized throughout out the land. And she's getting thread bare, and she's wearin' thin, but she's in good shape, for the shape she's in. 'Cause she's been through the fire before, and I believe she can take a whole lot more." "So we raise her up every morning, and we bring her down slow every night. We don't let her touch the ground, and we fold her up right. On second thought, I do like to brag, 'cause I'm mighty proud of that Ragged Old Flag."
Update, 13 June 2013: Now Vimeo has removed the video. Vimeo's email to me: "Your video 'Gay Attorney Supports Official Abuse of Power Against Chick-fil-A' has been removed for violating our Guidelines. Reason: Violates Privacy." Incredible! The attorney was openly demonstrating with other protesters on a public sidewalk in broad daylight and consented to being interviewed. That's a violation of privacy? Really?!?
WATCH THE VIDEO BANNED BY YOUTUBE AND VIMEO: My interview with a gay activist attorney in Chicago. Watch it on Facebook: https://t.co/73A052IrPN
Staring into the camera while being interviewed
UPDATE, June 13, 2013 - I am dead serious about this. If you're an attorney who feels strongly about free speech, and is opposed to the heavy-handed policies of YouTube and now Vimeo that suppress conservatives, please contact me at via @ChiNewsBench on Twitter or via comment on this post.
YouTube removed the video in August, 2012, when I originally published this post. Vimeo removed it in July, 2013. Both said the reason was violation of privacy. But no privacy was violated. I interviewed an openly gay attorney (David Amen) who attended the
anti-Chick-fil-A "kiss-in" in Chicago. He consented to an interview on
camera, which is obvious in the video. Somebody ("an individual," says
YouTube) filed a violation of privacy complaint. But who? Everybody in the video was on a public sidewalk. The only people identified by name consented to be identified.
I contend that no privacy was violated and that YouTube violated their own TOS by not taking into account that this video is a newsworthy account of a news
event. The attorney was actually seeking publicity "to make a statement" against Chick-fil-A, which was why he was at the event. YouTube disabled my video interview.
