Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause By Kevin Merida (Washington Post)

Because people don't believe me when I say racism (conscious or not) is still pretty rampant in the Midwest.

Article

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season.

One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."

Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.

Gillian Bergeron, 23, was in charge of a five-county regional operation in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest member of her team was 27. At Scranton's annual Saint Patrick's Day parade, some of the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. That was the first signal that this wasn't exactly Obama country. There would be others.

In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.

"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"

Sliding Into Work at Google HQ

Very cool video of Google's Zurich headquarters.

One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal by Andrew Martin (NYT)

Sad, how much food we waste.

Highlights:

...the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste. An update is under way.

A more recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans generate roughly 30 million tons of food waste each year, which is about 12 percent of the total waste stream. All but about 2 percent of that food waste ends up in landfills; by comparison, 62 percent of yard waste is composted.

America's Second Harvest — The Nation's Food Bank Network, a group of more than 200 food banks, reports that donations of food are down 9 percent, but the number of people showing up for food has increased 20 percent. The group distributes more than two billion pounds of donated and recovered food and consumer products each year.

In England, a recent study revealed that Britons toss away a third of the food they purchase, including more than four million whole apples, 1.2 million sausages and 2.8 million tomatoes. In Sweden, families with small children threw out about a quarter of the food they bought, a recent study there found.

And most distressing, perhaps, is that in some parts of Africa a quarter or more of the crops go bad before they can be eaten. A study presented last week to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development found that the high losses in developing nations "are mainly due to a lack of technology and infrastructure" as well as insect infestations, microbial growth, damage and high temperatures and humidity.

Of course, eliminating food waste won't solve the problems of world hunger and greenhouse-gas pollution. But it could make a dent in this country and wouldn't require a huge amount of effort or money. The Department of Agriculture estimated that recovering just 5 percent of the food that is wasted could feed four million people a day; recovering 25 percent would feed 20 million people.

The City of San Francisco is turning food waste from residents and restaurants into tons of compost a day. The city has structured its garbage collection system so that it provides incentives for recycling and composting.

The federal government tried once before, during the Clinton administration, to get the nation fired up about food waste, but the effort was discontinued by the Bush administration. The secretary of agriculture at the time, Dan Glickman, created a program to encourage food recovery and gleaning, which means collecting leftover crops from farm fields.

He assigned a member of his staff, Mr. Berg, to oversee the program, and Mr. Berg spent the next several years encouraging farmers, schools, hospitals and companies to donate extra crops and food to feeding charities. A Good Samaritan law was passed by Congress that protected food donors from liability for donating food and groceries, spurring more donations.

"We made a dent," said Mr. Berg, now at the New York City hunger group. "We reduced waste and increased the amount of people being fed. It wasn't a panacea, but it helped."

Poverty is Poison by Paul Krugman (NYT)

Busy/at work. Article

Highlights:

...neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory

In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969.

But the distance between the poor and the rest of us is much greater than it was 40 years ago, because most American incomes have risen in real terms while the official poverty line has not.

According to one recent estimate, American children born to parents in the bottom fourth of the income distribution have almost a 50 percent chance of staying there — and almost a two-thirds chance of remaining stuck if they’re black.

That’s not surprising. Growing up in poverty puts you at a disadvantage at every step.

The study found, roughly speaking, that in modern America parental status trumps ability: students who did very well on a standardized test but came from low-status families were slightly less likely to get through college than students who tested poorly but had well-off parents.

None of this is inevitable.

The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized: Inside the raw-milk underground By Nathanael Johnson

Not sure how much of this to believe, but it's definitely interesting. The hippy side of me is intrigued.

"The very thing that makes raw milk dangerous, its dirtiness, may make people healthier, and pasteurization could be cleansing beneficial bacteria from milk."

Read more.

"A balance must be struck between health and yield" seems to be the take-home message, along with

"Although American consumers are periodically outraged by the realities of modern agriculture, they never stop demanding cheaper food. Stoker doesn't mind playing the hand he's been dealt. He's good at producing cheap food. But, he acknowledged, "cheap food makes for expensive health care." "

"The Human Footprint" (National Geographic Video)

Inspired by Chen, I watched the National Geographic documentary "The Human Footprint." And now you should too.

Watch:


or Click Here.

11 Odd but Simple Ways to Improve Your Health

Unconventional ways to improve your health

I'm down with all but 6 and 8 (they seem to product oriented and I know little about them); on the fence about 2 (only cuz I've never heard of that before).

A lot of it seemed focused on helping us detoxify gunk that builds up in our bodies.

i really need to fix my posture. again.

NBA Quotes of the Year (2005)

Delayed reaction, but amusing nonetheless

Casa.... What?

This gorgeous house in Costa Rica that I (we)'ve been catching glimpses of over the past few months. The library makes me drool, but I looove the inside in general.

Sigh

Easy-to-scroll-through pictures
NYT Article

And no, I don't know what's the deal with the name; I didn't even know it was a slur until recently. Let's hope it means something different in Spanish.

Amazing Picture: Lightning Storm Engulfs Erupting Volcano

After 9,000 years of silence, Chile's Chaitén volcano erupts amid a lightning storm.

SubhanAllah. Gorgeous gorgeous pics

Mugging Gone Wrong

Julio Diaz takes his mugger out to dinner.

A pretty nice, heartwarming true story.

Dr. Sherman Jackson - Covering Islam and Muslims in America

An oldie, but a goodie.

"Muslims in America are locked into a hidden battle over who will get to decide what Islam means in the modern world. Keynote speaker Sherman Jackson, a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan and a specialist in Islamic law and theology, discussed the history behind this predicament, and what it means for media coverage of Islam in the United States. Jackson began by defining Muslims in America as an amalgamation of ethnicities, races, classes, and histories – all of which are only loosely bound by their common commitment to basic religious and theological postulates. There exists an ongoing exchange about what that means and how that will affect Muslims’ search for a dignified existence in America. Jackson said that Islam’s authority crisis is exacerbated in the United States because groups are competing for the authority to define and speak for Muslims in America."

Watch:



or Click.

Abu Ghraib / Sabrina Harman

Just very... depressing.

I read it a while ago, at this point. I was honestly unsure of whether the piece was trying to humanize Harman and her unit or expose them. It felt... eerie. I'm not sure how to explain it... Just that... it's so strange to see such powerful actions transcribed to harmless words. Inter spliced with the letters Harman wrote, often justifying her actions (and her removal from the atrocities), it was just... surreal.

No highlights. Just read it.

"You Walk Wrong" by Adam Sternbergh (New Yorker)

An article discussing how walking in shoes - any shoes - could be hurting our feet and knees.

Read here

Highlights:

"Brennan was an avid tennis player who suffered from chronic knee and ankle injuries. His father taught the Alexander Technique, a discipline that studies the links between kinetics and behavior; basically, the connection between how we move and how we act. Brennan's father encouraged Tim to try playing tennis barefoot. Tim was skeptical at first, but tried it, and found that his injuries disappeared."

For decades, the guiding principle of shoe design has been to compensate for the perceived deficiencies of the human foot. Since it hurts to strike your heel on the ground, nearly all shoes provide a structure to lift the heel. And because walking on hard surfaces can be painful, we wrap our feet in padding. Many people suffer from flat feet or fallen arches, so we wear shoes with built-in arch supports, to help hold our arches up.

"Here's another example: If you wear high heels for a long time, your tendons shorten—and then it's only comfortable for you to wear high heels. One saleswoman I spoke to at a running-shoe store described how, each summer, the store is flooded with young women complaining of a painful tingling in the soles of their feet—what she calls "flip-flop-itis," which is the result of women's suddenly switching from heeled winter boots to summer flip-flops. This is the shoe paradox: We've come to believe that shoes, not bare feet, are natural and comfortable, when in fact wearing shoes simply creates the need for wearing shoes."

^^ Totally happens to me when I work out in flat sneakers. Weeird.

"Consider a paper titled "Athletic Footwear: Unsafe Due to Perceptual Illusions," published in a 1991 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. "Wearers of expensive running shoes that are promoted as having additional features that protect (e.g., more cushioning, 'pronation correction') are injured significantly more frequently than runners wearing inexpensive shoes (costing less than $40)." According to another study, people in expensive cushioned running shoes were twice as likely to suffer an injury—31.9 injuries per 1,000 kilometers, as compared with 14.3—than were people who went running in hard-soled shoes."

... the impact on the knees was 12 percent less when people walked barefoot than it was when people wore the padded shoes.

In effect, we instinctively plant our feet harder to cancel out the shock absorption of the padding. (The study found the same thing holds true when gymnasts land on soft mats—they actually land harder.) We do this, apparently, because we need to feel the ground in order to feel balanced. And barefoot, we can feel the ground—and we can naturally absorb the impact of each step with our bodies.

"In one of the Rush Medical College knee-adduction experiments, barefoot walking yielded the lowest knee load, but a flat sneaker, like a pair of Pumas, also offered significantly less load than the overly padded walking shoes."

What Would You Do: Prejudice (ABC)

But what if you witnessed "Islamophobia" in action and saw someone being victimized because of someone else's prejudices? What would you do?

ABC's production crew outfitted The Czech Stop, a bustling roadside bakery north of Waco, Texas, with hidden cameras and two actors. One played a female customer wearing a traditional Muslim head scarf, or hijab. The other acted as a sales clerk who refused to serve her and spouted common anti-Muslim and anti-Arab slurs.

The polarity of reactions was shocking, from support to seething disapproval. Never did we expect customers to be s

Article

Preview

Video

"South Asians face increased heart risk"

Damn. More motivation to work out?

The same yellow fat that hugs Ashok's heart also surrounds his other organs. This abdominal, or visceral fat, is much more active – and dangerous – than the fat found under your skin. It acts like a furnace to produce toxic fumes in the body, decreasing insulin sensitivity, reducing good cholesterol levels and raising blood pressure, all of which are risk factors for heart disease.

Sonia Anand, an associate professor of medicine at McMaster University and an international expert on the links between ethnicity and heart disease and diabetes, says South Asians are more likely to get visceral fat than any other ethnic group, even if they eat and exercise the same. People of South Asian descent are also more apt to have the same array of risk factors for heart disease as Caucasians, but at about 45 pounds lighter, she says.

How to Recycle Practically Anything by Sally Deneen (E Magazine)

Don’t throw away those exercise videos and ubiquitous AOL CDs. Jim Williams wants you to mail old videotapes and CDs to him, so that more than 40 disabled staffers at his ACT Recycling in Columbia, Missouri can recycle them. And, oh, don’t toss out those used Fed-Ex envelopes or broken smoke detectors; their manufacturers take them back for recycling.

Indeed, these days, it seems that more cast-offs than ever can be recycled. No matter where you live, you can recycle a wide range of discards—aseptic juice packages, printer cartridges, ordinary batteries, iPods, PDAs, and even cell phones.

Read more, including a guide to help you figure out how to recycle things you previously thought were unrecyclable.

Kevin Love's Full Court Shots

Sounds pornographic. And may be, depending on what kind of sports fan you are.



Youtube

And this time it's not a powerade commercial.

"Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School" by Andrea Elliot (NYT)

Depressing.

What really freaks me out about the article:

But Ms. Almontaser’s downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.

“It’s a battle that’s really just begun,” said Daniel Pipes, who directs a conservative research group, the Middle East Forum, and helped lead the charge against Ms. Almontaser and the school.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical Islam focused largely on terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities or asserting links between Muslim organizations and violent groups like Hamas. But as the authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values in the public domain.

"For Muslim poor, a shameful admission" by Noor Javed (The Star)

Short article about the growing population of the Muslim poor in Toronto.

May Allah swt spare any of us from such hardships (as well as from the hardships of excess wealth), ameen.

Medicine's Cutting Edge: Re-Growing Organs

(CBS) Imagine re-growing a severed fingertip, or creating an organ in the lab that can be transplanted into a patient without risk of rejection. It sounds like science fiction, but it's not. It's the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine, in which scientists are learning to harness the body's own power to regenerate itself, with astonishing results. Correspondent Wyatt Andrews brings you to the scientific frontier.

Craziness. And depressing to see so many of the injured Army Veterans.

Article/Video

'Allah' vs. 'God' (LAT)

'Allah' vs. 'God': Using English to separate the two has become a dangerous practice.
by Rabih Alameddine

We never say the French pray to Dieu, or Mexicans pray to Dios. Having Allah be different from God implies that Muslims pray to a special deity. It classifies Muslims as the Other. Separating Allah from God, we only see a vengeful, alarming deity, one responsible for those frightful fatwas and ghastly jihads -- rarely the compassionate God. The opening line of every chapter in the Koran is "Bi Ism Allah, Al Rahman, Al Rahim": In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful. In the name of Allah. One and the same.

In these troubled times, creating more differences, further parsing so to speak, is troubling, even dangerous.