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Monday, December 23, 2013

State Lawmaker Calls Arizona A 'Desert Racist Wasteland' After Football Loss



Link:  State Lawmaker Calls Arizona A 'Desert Racist Wasteland' After Football Loss

The Huffington Post  |  By Posted:   |  Updated: 12/23/2013 10:43 am EST

The Cardinals beat the Seattle Seahawks in a 17-10 win Sunday afternoon, ending their opponents' 14-game home-field winning streak. Shortly following the game, Washington state Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon (D-Burien) took to Twitter to trash talk the victors.

"Losing a football game sucks," Fitzgibbon wrote, according to the Associated Press' Mike Baker. "Losing to a desert racist wasteland sucks a lot."

The Democratic representative deleted the tweet shortly after, sending out the following message:

In an interview, Fitzgibbon explained to Baker that Washington citizens "have not appreciated" Arizona's treatment of immigrants through discriminatory legislation such as Senate Bill 1070, which requires officers to question the immigration status of those suspected to be in the country illegally. He said the state's lawmakers should consider revisiting legislation that leads to racial profiling.

Al Qaeda "apologises" for Yemen hospital attack after gunman kills innocent doctors and nurses

I don't suppose he's going to apologize for the 3000 innocent Americans they murdered, and for forcing America into a war in Afghanistan that has taken many more innocent Afghan, Pakistani, and Yemen lives (please don't blame the US: no 9/11, no all the other killings). Frankly, no rational person for one moment believes in your "apology", except as a pure political maneuver to gain sympathizers in the West (which you will no doubt succeed at). And people who have forfeited the right to life by their repeated inhumanities do not deserve to, and never will, live free -- those few who survive, that is.
duck dynasty gay TODAY -- Pictured: Phil Robertson appears on NBC News' 'Today' show -- (Photo by:   PeterKramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images) | NBC NewsWire via Getty Images
        
Let me get this right. During an interview, Robertson makes the anti-gay, racist (and un-Christian in my view) statements below. He gets understandably fired from his job, just anyone else would, but somehow becomes a hero and martyr to right-wing Christians and their deluded followers everywhere -- only in America (I hope).
From Wikipedia
 "On December 18, 2013, A&E announced an indefinite suspension of Robertson after comments he made about his personal beliefs while being interviewed b...y Drew Magary of GQ.[20] During the interview for a featured article in GQ's January 2014 issue, titled, "What the Duck?"; Magary asked Robertson: "What, in your mind, is sinful?"[21] Answering, Robertson said: Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men." Robertson continued by questioning the appeal of same-sex relationships, particularly amongst men; saying: "It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical." Robertson went on to say “We never, ever judge someone on who’s going to heaven, hell. That’s the Almighty’s job. We just love ’em, give ’em the good news about Jesus—whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later, you see what I’m saying?”[20][22][23][24] In response to A&E's suspension, Robertson released a statement, saying in part: "I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me."[25]

"Robertson also drew criticism for his racial views which he expressed in the same interview. Robertson remarked that being black in Louisiana during the pre-civil rights era was not all that bad, stating:

"I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field .... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word! ... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

"In response, the LGBT civil rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and the African-American civil rights organization NAACP wrote a joint letter to the president of A&E calling Robertson's remarks dangerous and inaccurate."

Tunable symmetry breaking and helical edge transport in a graphene quantum spin Hall state

Schematic diagram of the capacitance bridge-on-a-chip in a tilted magnetic field.

Nature | Letter by
A. F. Young,1, 3
B. Hunt,1, 3  
Jarillo-Herrero1  

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Solar activity not a key cause of climate change, study shows

Original article:  Solar activity not a key cause of climate change, study shows, published by Phys.org.  Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-solar-key-climate.html#jCp

sun
Image of sun courtesy of NASA.        

Climate change has not been strongly influenced by variations in heat from the sun, a new scientific study shows.

The findings overturn a widely held scientific view that lengthy periods of warm and cold weather in the past might have been caused by periodic fluctuations in solar activity.

Research examining the causes of climate change in the northern hemisphere over the past 1000 years has shown that until the year 1800, the key driver of periodic changes in climate was . These tend to prevent sunlight reaching the Earth, causing cool, drier weather. Since 1900, greenhouse gases have been the primary cause of .

The findings show that periods of low sun activity should not be expected to have a large impact on temperatures on Earth, and are expected to improve scientists' understanding and help climate forecasting.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh carried out the study using records of past temperatures constructed with data from tree rings and other historical sources. They compared this data record with computer-based models of past climate, featuring both significant and minor changes in the sun.
They found that their model of weak changes in the sun gave the best correlation with temperature records, indicating that has had a minimal impact on temperature in the past millennium.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council.

Dr Andrew Schurer, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, said: "Until now, the influence of the sun on past has been poorly understood. We hope that our new discoveries will help improve our understanding of how temperatures have changed over the past few centuries, and improve predictions for how they might develop in future. Links between the and anomalously cold winters in the UK are still being explored."

More information: Small influence of solar variability on climate over the past millennium, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2040
Journal reference: Nature Geoscience


The Nutcracker Suite has become one of most famous ballets in the last fifty years.  My mother took my sister and I to see when I was eleven or twelve.  I was instantly enraptured by the music, the dances and acting, and the way the two are so wonderfully synchronized.

Forty-five years later I have finally seen it again, and found it, if anything, more phenomenal than I remembered.  I see how, while there is much ugliness in this world caused by humans, we are -- almost ironically -- capable of the most sublime and overwhelming creations.  I have included some information from Wikipedia below (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutcracker_Suite).

Synopsis

Konstantin Ivanov's original sketch for the set of The Nutcracker (1892)

Below is a synopsis based on the original 1892 libretto by Marius Petipa. The story varies from production to production, though most follow the basic outline. The names of the characters also vary. In the original E.T.A. Hoffmann story, the young heroine is called Marie Stahlbaum and Clara (Klärchen) is her doll's name. In the adaptation by Dumas on which Petipa based his libretto, her name is Marie Silberhaus.[6] In still other productions, such as Baryshnikov's, Clara is Clara Stahlbaum rather than Clara Silberhaus.

Act I
Scene 1: The Stahlbaum Home
It is Christmas Eve. Family and friends have gathered in the parlor to decorate the beautiful Christmas tree in preparation for the night's festivities. Once the tree is finished, the children are sent for. They stand in awe of the tree sparkling with candles and decorations.

The festivities begin. A march is played. Presents are given out to the children. Suddenly, as the owl-topped grandmother clock strikes eight, a mysterious figure enters the room. It is Drosselmeyer, a local councilman, magician, and Clara's godfather. He is also a talented toymaker who has brought with him gifts for the children, including four lifelike dolls who dance to the delight of all. He then has them put away for safekeeping.

Clara and Fritz are sad to see the dolls being taken away, but Drosselmeyer has yet another toy for them: a wooden Nutcracker carved in the shape of a little man, used for cracking nuts. The other children ignore it, but Clara immediately takes a liking to it. Fritz, however, purposely breaks it. Clara is heartbroken.

During the night, after everyone else has gone to bed, Clara returns to the parlor to check on her beloved Nutcracker. As she reaches the little bed, the clock strikes midnight and she looks up to see Drosselmeyer perched atop it in place of the owl. Suddenly, mice begin to fill the room and the Christmas tree begins to grow to dizzying heights. The Nutcracker also grows to life-size. Clara finds herself in the midst of a battle between an army of gingerbread soldiers and the mice, led by the Mouse King. The mice begin to eat the gingerbread soldiers.

The Nutcracker appears to lead the gingerbread soldiers, who are joined by tin soldiers and dolls who serve as doctors to carry away the wounded. As the Mouse King advances on the still-wounded Nutcracker, Clara throws her slipper at him, distracting him long enough for the Nutcracker to stab him.

Scene 2: A Pine Forest
The mice retreat and the Nutcracker is transformed into a handsome Prince. He leads Clara through the moonlit night to a pine forest in which the snowflakes dance around them.

Act II
Scene 1: The Land of Sweets
Clara and the Prince travel in a nutshell boat pulled by dolphins to the beautiful Land of Sweets, ruled by the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Prince's place until his return. He recounts for her how he had been saved by Clara from the Mouse King and had been transformed back into a Prince.

In honor of the young heroine, a celebration of sweets from around the world is produced: chocolate from Spain, coffee from Arabia, and tea from China all dance for their amusement; candy canes from Russia; Danish shepherdesses perform on their flutes; Mother Ginger has her children, the polichinelles, emerge from under her enormous skirt to dance; a string of beautiful flowers perform a waltz. To conclude the night, the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier perform a dance.

A final waltz is performed by all the sweets, after which Clara and the Prince are crowned rulers of the Land of Sweets. Soon, they leave in a sleigh drawn by reindeer with everyone waving goodbye. Clara is found sleeping in the parlor. The nutcracker is under the Christmas tree. She awakes, thinking it was all a dream, but then finds her crown sitting beside her, leading to question, was it a dream? She walks to the tree, takes her nutcracker, and goes back to sleep, the implication being that if it was all a dream, that she would want to keep dreaming.

Archconservative Jim Inhofe Has Change Of Heart About Democrats

Archconservative Jim Inhofe Has Change Of Heart About Democrats
christina.wilkie@huffingtonpost.com


 

"I probably shouldn't say this, but I seem to have gotten more -- well at least as many, maybe more -- communications from some of my Democrat friends," Sen. Inhofe told host David Gregory on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And I'm a pretty partisan Republican."

In the wake of his personal tragedy, Inhofe said, "all of a sudden the old barriers that were there -- the old differences, those things that keep us apart -- just disappear. It's not just a recognition that I know how much more important this is, but they do, too. And they look out. And they realize that you've lost someone. And that brings us closer together."

During three terms in the Senate, Inhofe has established a reputation as a take-no-prisoners political brawler, and as a legislator whose ideology is both fiscally and socially to the right of many in his party. An outspoken skeptic of the scientific evidence for man-made climate change, Inhofe has butted heads on the Senate floor over the issue with nearly every member of the Democratic leadership.

When news of his son's death reached Washington, however, politics were quickly set aside. And even though Inhofe is a legendary thorn in the side of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the loss of Inhofe's son served to underscore for him the things that he and Reid have in common.

"Harry and I ... disagree on all this stuff, this political stuff. But we were both married the same year, in 1959. And we've both had some illnesses. So yeah, I would say that when something like this happens, you get closer together. The differences are still there. ... But your attitude changes," said Inhofe.

Inhofe suggested the change is also likely to extend beyond personal dynamics to his work in the Senate. "I can't help but think when I'm confronting someone on something in which we disagree, I'll know how they responded to my loss. And how we got closer. And it'll stay that way," he said.
 

Operator (computer programming)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator_(computer_programmin...