Rachel Maddow: Police chief discusses apology for civil rights era shortcomings:
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
Did Scalia Really Say That He Was, 'White and Proud'?
Did Scalia Really Say That He Was, 'White and Proud'?:
'via Blog this'
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who startled colleagues this week with a reference to “racial entitlements,” displays the same mindset as segregationist U.S. senators did when they fought civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s, a powerful congressman and movement veteran said Friday.
The reference, as the high court heard a legal challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, “absolutely shocked” South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the Democratic House leadership, he told Huffington Post in an interview.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin "Nino" Scalia
“I’m not easily surprised by anything, but that took me to a place I haven’t been in a long time,” Clyburn said of Scalia’s words from the bench. “What Justice Scalia said, to me, was ‘The 15th Amendment of the Constitution ain’t got no concerns for me because I’m white and proud.’”
Scalia appeared scornful toward the landmark Voting Rights Act, which was renewed as recently as 2006 by a 99-0 vote of the U.S. Senate. He argued that lawmakers are afraid of the consequences of voting against it. “Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it’s very difficult to get out of them through normal political processes,” said the long-serving Supreme Court justice.
MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow, on Wednesday, described Scalia as “a troll who loves to make people mad,” arguing:
“He’s saying this for effect. He knows it’s offensive and he’s going to get a gasp from the courtroom, which he got. And he loves it. He’s like the guy in your blog comment thread who’s using the n-word . . . He’s that kind of guy.”
Clyburn is a cradle civil rights activist. He was elected president of a local NAACP youth chapter in South Carolina at the age of 12. He became the first African-American adviser to a South Carolina governor, and later served as the state’s human rights commissioner.
As a young man in the cradle of the Confederacy, he told Huffington Post, Clyburn was “almost immune” from racist oratory heard around him, but added that he would never forget hearing the late Sen. Strom Thurmond defending his opposition to the 1957 Civil Rights Act by saying, as paraphrased, “Our Negroes are pleased with their plight.”
Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. He says Justice Scalia's "racial entitlements" remarks remind him of Southern segregationist senators arguing against Civil Rights in the 1950's and 1960's.
Thurmond staged a 24-hour, 18-minute filibuster against the 1957 Civil Rights law, the longest in Senate history. He was an outspoken defender of Southern womanhood and longtime opponent of mixing the races. After Thurmond’s death at age 100, it was revealed that as a young man he had sired a daughter with a servant in the Thurmond family home.
Scalia reminds Clyburn of Thurmond. Clyburn is also chilled by a bevy of state voting laws — in South Carolina, among other states — designed to make it more difficult to vote, and directed at voting habits (e.g. voting on Sundays) favored by African-American citizens.
“When you have in 2012 . . . states making changes to their laws that you can look on their face and see that these changes will make it harder for minorities to have their votes affect the results that they intend, you say that we don’t need (the Voting Rights Act) anymore? Is this some kind of entitlement?” he asked.
“Well, the Constitution of the U.S. is an entitlement for everybody.”
The historical truth, Clyburn argued, is that the 1965 law has “had a positive impact on the voting rights of people traditionally denied the right to vote. To ignore that, to me, is beyond the pale. It means you went to the bench with an agenda.”
“Playing around with the Voting Rights Act is playing with fire.”
'via Blog this'
Friday, March 1, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Why Calorie Labels Are Wrong | Mother Jones
Why Calorie Labels Are Wrong | Mother Jones:
'via Blog this'
Why Calorie Labels Are Wrong
Studies suggest that calorie counts are inaccurate, especially for raw and unprocessed foods.
| Mon Feb. 25, 2013 3:12 AM PST
To understand the modern calorie counting system, we have to go back to the late 19th century *, when Wilbur Atwater sat in his Connecticut lab and burned a bunch of food. Then he weighed some human feces and urine. The burning told him the amount of energy in the food; the human waste told him the amount excreted. Subtract the two, and the Atwater system was born: four calories per gram of protein, nine for fat, four for sugars. Check out the label on a supermarket salad in 2013, and the caloric value you see is largely based off of Atwater—even though scientists are increasingly suspicious the number is wrong.
Debate over the science of calories comes at the same time that health-conscious legislators are requiring restaurants to show calorie counts on their menus. Following the lead of New York City and California, Obamacare has a provision to make calorie labeling mandatory at chain restaurants across the country. For that to make a difference to our health, however, we have to understand what a calorie really means. At the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last week, a panel of scientists presented research that is just beginning to tease out the nuances of the calorie. Whether food is cooked, the energy it takes to break down tough-to-digest foods, and gut bacteria activity all affect how much energy humans actually get from eating.
Raw, unprocessed foods have fewer calories than previously thought, according to the work from the lab of Richard Wrangham, a professor in biological anthropology at Harvard. Cooking or processing breaks down cell structures and unravels the proteins in food, so more energy is available through digestion. While a grad student in Wrangham's lab, researcher Rachel Carmody led a study feeding mice raw and cooked sweet potatoes or meat. Mice on the raw diet lost more weight. Carmody estimates that cooking increased the caloric intake from beef by 15 percent and the sweet potatoes by 39 percent. The Atwater system, on the other hand, treats raw and cooked meat the same, though the calorie counts for cooked, processed foods are more likely to be accurate.
That thing that people say about celery having negative calories? It's theoretically possible.
The reasons for differences between nutritional content of raw and cooked foods are complicated. For starters, raw, unprocessed food takes more energy to digest. That thing that people say about celery having negative calories? It's theoretically possible. "The concept of what net calories the body is getting is fundamentally intuitive," Carmody says about negative calories. Despite its proliferation among dieters, the idea has not been well studied in humans. However, Burmese pythons, which eat very large meals but very infrequently, are a good model organism for researching the energetic cost of digestion. A paper in collaboration with Stephen Secor at the University of Alabama found that cooking and grinding beef reduced the amount of energy required in pythons' digestion by 23.4 percent.
Atwater also didn't know that our guts are home to billions of bacteria—some mooch away nutrients, while others help break down food to release more nutrients. Gut microbiota varies from person to person, and diet plays a big factor in who lives in our intestines. Obesity and starvation, for example, both change the bacterial community and its ability to extract nutrients from food. Carmody's new research suggests microbial differences between mice who rely on diets of processed versus unprocessed food, too.
While Obamacare survived Congress and the Supreme Court, the FDA hasn't been able to implement the provision that requires calorie labeling in chain restaurants. The final rule was supposed to be published by July 2012, but the FDA's website lists it as still "delayed." Even if the government gets its act together, though, those menu labels would be more helpful if they were accurate.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified the century in which Atwater performed his experiments.
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Communalism Watch: There was then no Mohan Bhagwat of the RSS or no leader of the Jamaat, no Asaram Bapu
Communalism Watch: There was then no Mohan Bhagwat of the RSS or no leader of the Jamaat, no Asaram Bapu:
'via Blog this'
January 11, 2013
There was then no Mohan Bhagwat of the RSS or no leader of the Jamaat, no Asaram Bapu
The Times of India
Two women forging the idea of India
by Dileep Padgaonkar
11 January 2013
Had we been aware of our history, we would have been able to place the two events that have shaken us down to the roots in the last few weeks - the brutal rape of the 23-year-old woman in Delhi and the anti-Hindu tirades of a leader of a Hyderabad-based Muslim political party - in a more lucid perspective. As a new work of historical fiction (In the City of Gold and Silver) by Kenizé Mourad, a French writer of Indo-Turkish lineage, vividly demonstrates, the events, and the outrageous responses to them, are not what India was a little more than a century and a half ago. It was another country.
Mourad's book is set in Awadh on the eve of its annexation by the East India Company. She evokes the atmosphere prevalent at that time in telling detail. It was the heyday of both high culture and popular culture. Architecture and music, poetry and drama, painting and food reached unsurpassed heights of refinement. In his parikhana - the house of fairies - Wajid Ali Shah held music concerts and poetry readings and staged plays. He was an accomplished poet himself and a good kathak dancer too. One of his favourite pastimes was to play the role of Lord Krishna in a dance-drama.
There was no Owaisi then to rant against the beliefs and practices of Hindus. And there was no Sadhavi Rithambara to deride the beliefs and practices of Muslims. Both communities partook of this composite culture with unabashed zeal. They celebrated each other's festivals, shared their moments of joy and sorrow and, most importantly, were united in their animus against British colonial rule.
The book's focus is on Begum Hazrat Mahal. The author, drawing on exhaustive research, traces her life from her humble beginnings as a child of a family of artisans to her ascent as the Regent of the kingdom after her husband, Wajid Ali Shah, was ousted from his throne and sent into exile to Calcutta on the pretext that in his pursuit of pleasure he had failed to provide good governance to his subjects. The pretext, as it turned out, was spurious, for the Company had long eyed the prosperous kingdom and had resorted to every sordid trick to grab Awadh.
What the British authorities did not reckon with is the Begum's grit and determination to counter their designs. Her hatred of the colonisers knew no bounds. Once the sepoys, Hindu and Muslim alike, turned mutinous over the use of cow and pig fat in the cartridges supplied to them, she reached out to landed elites of both communities to mount a fierce offensive against the Company's troops. That included Nana Sahib, Tantia Tope and Raja Jai Pal who would be her confidante and chief of her army.
The Begum eventually faced defeat. The Company's troops were better equipped and better trained. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, many of her allies struck deals with the colonial power to protect their vested interests. But to the end the Begum refused to compromise. Both she and her son were offered handsome privy purses if they gave up their claim to the throne. She rejected the offer with contempt and died virtually penniless in Nepal. Her grave, unkempt and in disrepair, is somewhere in the concrete jungle of Kathmandu. The Rani of Jhansi has been widely, and justly, hailed for her role in the First War of Independence. But Begum Hazrat Mahal, a great beauty, a poet, a stateswoman, has been all but forgotten. A park in Lucknow named after her is in a shambles. She does not figure in history textbooks. This is odd for these two valiant women were pioneers for Indian independence in their own right.
There was then no Mohan Bhagwat of the RSS or no leader of the Jamaat, no Asaram Bapu and no khap leader to remind women that their divinely-ordained duty is to be only dutiful wives and doting mothers. Mourad's book should encourage a resurgent India to tell the worthies of all communities claiming to uphold 'spiritual', 'religious', 'cultural' and 'secular' values - synonyms for reactionaries and opportunists - that their time is up. We won't allow them to bamboozle us any more.
Two women forging the idea of India
by Dileep Padgaonkar
11 January 2013
Had we been aware of our history, we would have been able to place the two events that have shaken us down to the roots in the last few weeks - the brutal rape of the 23-year-old woman in Delhi and the anti-Hindu tirades of a leader of a Hyderabad-based Muslim political party - in a more lucid perspective. As a new work of historical fiction (In the City of Gold and Silver) by Kenizé Mourad, a French writer of Indo-Turkish lineage, vividly demonstrates, the events, and the outrageous responses to them, are not what India was a little more than a century and a half ago. It was another country.
Mourad's book is set in Awadh on the eve of its annexation by the East India Company. She evokes the atmosphere prevalent at that time in telling detail. It was the heyday of both high culture and popular culture. Architecture and music, poetry and drama, painting and food reached unsurpassed heights of refinement. In his parikhana - the house of fairies - Wajid Ali Shah held music concerts and poetry readings and staged plays. He was an accomplished poet himself and a good kathak dancer too. One of his favourite pastimes was to play the role of Lord Krishna in a dance-drama.
There was no Owaisi then to rant against the beliefs and practices of Hindus. And there was no Sadhavi Rithambara to deride the beliefs and practices of Muslims. Both communities partook of this composite culture with unabashed zeal. They celebrated each other's festivals, shared their moments of joy and sorrow and, most importantly, were united in their animus against British colonial rule.
The book's focus is on Begum Hazrat Mahal. The author, drawing on exhaustive research, traces her life from her humble beginnings as a child of a family of artisans to her ascent as the Regent of the kingdom after her husband, Wajid Ali Shah, was ousted from his throne and sent into exile to Calcutta on the pretext that in his pursuit of pleasure he had failed to provide good governance to his subjects. The pretext, as it turned out, was spurious, for the Company had long eyed the prosperous kingdom and had resorted to every sordid trick to grab Awadh.
What the British authorities did not reckon with is the Begum's grit and determination to counter their designs. Her hatred of the colonisers knew no bounds. Once the sepoys, Hindu and Muslim alike, turned mutinous over the use of cow and pig fat in the cartridges supplied to them, she reached out to landed elites of both communities to mount a fierce offensive against the Company's troops. That included Nana Sahib, Tantia Tope and Raja Jai Pal who would be her confidante and chief of her army.
The Begum eventually faced defeat. The Company's troops were better equipped and better trained. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, many of her allies struck deals with the colonial power to protect their vested interests. But to the end the Begum refused to compromise. Both she and her son were offered handsome privy purses if they gave up their claim to the throne. She rejected the offer with contempt and died virtually penniless in Nepal. Her grave, unkempt and in disrepair, is somewhere in the concrete jungle of Kathmandu. The Rani of Jhansi has been widely, and justly, hailed for her role in the First War of Independence. But Begum Hazrat Mahal, a great beauty, a poet, a stateswoman, has been all but forgotten. A park in Lucknow named after her is in a shambles. She does not figure in history textbooks. This is odd for these two valiant women were pioneers for Indian independence in their own right.
There was then no Mohan Bhagwat of the RSS or no leader of the Jamaat, no Asaram Bapu and no khap leader to remind women that their divinely-ordained duty is to be only dutiful wives and doting mothers. Mourad's book should encourage a resurgent India to tell the worthies of all communities claiming to uphold 'spiritual', 'religious', 'cultural' and 'secular' values - synonyms for reactionaries and opportunists - that their time is up. We won't allow them to bamboozle us any more.
'via Blog this'
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)