Month: October 2013

Blog Action Day: HIV/AIDS (#HumanRights #BAD13)

Alicia Keys is teaming up with Greater Than AIDS to reach women about HIV/AIDS.

I’m not much into coincidence. All of these took place in a 10-day period:

*CBS Sunday Morning recently noted a milepost: it was 21 years ago when Magic Johnson told Los Angeles basketball fans: ‘I’m coming back to the Lakers and I’m playing again.’

“It was a dramatic reversal from the announcement he had made the previous November, one that had stunned people in the sports world and beyond: ”Because of the HIV virus that I have obtained, I will have to retire from the Lakers.'”

*I got this e-mail: Healthline recently partnered with the Timothy Ray Brown Foundation (TRBF) to launch “You’ve Got This” – a video campaign that encourages HIV patients to give hope and advice to the recently diagnosed. For every video created, Healthline will donate $10 to the TRBF towards finding a cure. Initial participants include Jack Mackenroth, Olympian Ji Wallace, Paul Lekakis, Josh Robbins, and Kevin Maloney.

We would love it if you could help us spread the word about the campaign by sharing with your friends, followers, and/or posting to your website or blog. For more information, please visit www.healthline.com/health/hiv-aids/youve-got-this or https://www.facebook.com/TheNewFaceofHIV.

I asked how long the videos would be accepted: “Currently, it is an open project – there isn’t a specific deadline. We plan to run it for at least a year.”

Admittedly, I was unfamiliar with Timothy Ray Brown. He is the Berlin Patient, who, some claim, has been cured of HIV. It may only be that he has a genetic mutation specific to him, but gene therapy may be a pathway to a real cure. The foundation does not claim that this is the sole path, so I am providing the links above.

*I happened across a television ad with singer Alicia Keys, teaming up with Greater Than AIDS, on the Empowered project, to reach women about HIV/AIDS awareness, since 1 in 4 people with AIDS are women.

*I had signed up for Blog Action Day, without really knowing what I wanted to write about in the area of Human Rights. Suddenly, addressing the still prevalent HIV/AIDS epidemic spoke to me. I think it’s a human rights issue.

If you should decide to participate in Blog Action Day, sign up at the website. Then go on your favorite social media sites and write, “I’ve just posted my #BlogActionDay post on #HumanRights on [yourwebsitelink] – take a look & leave a comment #BAD13. Tweet to them at @blogactionday. “Follow the live coverage on October 16, on blogactionday.org and our social media profiles to find out about other participant posts. If you like someone’s Blog Action Day post why not leave a comment and share it via social networks.”

N is for the N-word

“Regardless of the user, the N-word is still doing the exact job it was intended to do in the 1700s. Hell, it’s doing a better job.”

I don’t like it: the N-word. I know I mentioned this topic about four years ago, but it’s still true. No, it isn’t that I want it banned from historical literature, but it still makes me quite uncomfortable.

I hear some white folks complain, “I hear black people say it. Why can’t I?” It’s as though they feel they are being discriminated against or somehow deprived.

There’s a great cartoon that takes that argument apart. I was also taken by this article about hipster racism: “ideas, speech, and action meant to denigrate another’s person race or ethnicity under the guise of being urbane, witty (meaning ‘ironic’ nowadays), educated, liberal, and/or trendy;” I call BS on that “post-racial” so-called humor.

At the same time, the word is STILL being used as the bigoted term it is, such as this shining example, or this one. (I won’t even mention Rush Limbaugh.)

For the record, I don’t use slurs of various white groups, even though I’ve heard people of certain ethnicities self-describe with slurs.

Now, I also don’t like the N-word coming from black people, either. Jaquandor linked to this article by sports columnist Jason Whitlock from a couple of months ago, and it really spoke to me:

“The people at the top of the rap music food chain … know the dishonesty and the illogic that fuels the popular sentiment within commercial rap music industry that states the embrace of the N-word is harmless because young people have redefined it and erased its dehumanizing power…

“You don’t change something built to destroy you into something that uplifts you. It’s the equivalent of thinking the slop/food fed to slaves can be transformed into raw fruits and vegetables…

“As long as we keep cooking and serving up the N-word to each other, we’re going to remain mentally comfortable hunting and executing each other like animals and throwing on baseball caps supporting the killers.

“Regardless of the user, the N-word is still doing the exact job it was intended to do in the 1700s. Hell, it’s doing a better job.” That also addresses WHY don’t I like the N-word.

Even more poignantly, a recent inductee into the pro football Hall of Fame Cris Carter commented about a current white football player who had used the term: “He does not know how many people in my race [for which] that was the last word they heard before they died.”

No, I don’t like the N-word, and NONE of the rationales for its current use are at all persuasive.


ABC Wednesday – Round 13

Facebook and the shutdown

If no one’s is talking about the shutdown in YOUR Facebook circle, maybe it’s because it’s SO toxic.

In the Ask Roger Anything tradition, New York Erratic recently wondered:

Why do you think almost no one is discussing the shutdown and debt on Facebook? Usually, when something even vaguely political happens (e.g. an election, a school shooting, the Supreme Court decided something that made it to the national news), people are posting like crazy. So why virtually nothing?

OK, two contradictory answers about the shutdown:

1) It is not MY experience on Facebook that people aren’t talking about the shutdown. I see stuff every single day.

Here’s a couple on my timeline, from the last 36 hours, none from me:
“I think it’s time to start a revolution, friends. It only takes one! Imagine if one percent of Americans marched on Washington DC and demanded a new government. We could change the world!”

“REMOVE THE RADICALS IN DC ASAP. Ruining this country.”

“Gov. Andrew Cuomo announces that the state will pay the roughly $61,000 a day to reopen the Statue of Liberty. On the one hand, it’s a nice thing to do (and it no doubt helps tourism), on the other, these little tweaks to take the sting out of the shutdown just take the heat off the House of Representatives. ‘Hey, the parks and monuments are open, so what’s the big deal with the shutdown, right? Maybe those tea party folks are right that we don’t need the gubmint.'”

Plus LOTS of links to articles about the causes of the shutdown, like this one. People I know on FB are ticked off that “the Republican shutdown has now cost American taxpayers more than $3.3 billion and continues to sap our economy every day the government’s doors are closed.” I mean the shutdown doesn’t even save money!

Also, several data users are pointing out alternative sources for information, now that some of the core tools are not currently available.

In other words, NYE, I haven’t sensed that no one on Facebook is talking about the shutdown.

And, BTW, I totally disagree with the person on your FB timeline who wrote: “I think the main reason is that the ‘shutdown’ is not directly messing up anybody’s day.” I know people who have been furloughed. I AM one of those people without some resources I’m used to. People who plan their vacations to a national park all year and find a padlock on the doors aren’t inconvenienced?

2) If, in fact, no one’s is talking about the shutdown in YOUR Facebook circle, maybe it’s because it’s SO toxic. A SCOTUS ruling is announced, an election happens, and though the events have consequences, often long-term, they may not be immediately apparent. Whereas every day, we are reminded of the range of services not being provided by our government: sick people not in clinical trials, accidents and disease outbreaks not investigated, real life-and-death stuff.

We’ve become aware at a level not previously known that our government isn’t working, or at least is not working for the citizenry. When things like that happen, some people yell and holler, but others just want to cry in dismay. It’s what I linked to yesterday about us giving up, which is what some of them want; a discouraged citizenry that has surrendered, leaving THEM even more in control.

3) Re: the debt limit: When individual people weren’t paying their mortgages four or five years ago, it was painted by some as personal irresponsibility, and terms such as “moral hazard” were thrown around. THOSE people – J’accuse!

But the debt ceiling is such an amorphous concept, it’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around it. Many people believe/hope/pray that it won’t come. We’ve been threatened with it before, and we expect that, because the political fallout has been so fierce, they’ll fix it, maybe as early as tomorrow.

But I also subscribe to the “I’m used to it” theory. Remember when the price of gas first broke the $3 barrier and there was great gnashing of teeth? Likewise, when it went over $4. So now, with gas prices generally down, but still, over $3 for a very long time, it’s just not the issue it was. We get used to the “new normal” and shrug.

Malala, the government shutdown, and other things

I worked with Jeff Sharlet’s late mother Nancy, so I knew Jeff from when he’d beat me, legitimately, in SORRY when he was six.

I was quite moved to watch Malala Yousafzai on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart this past week. Malala is the teenager shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan, but survived, and has since set up a fund to support girls’ education. Here’s Part 1, the section that aired, but see Part 2 and Part 3 as well. If those links don’t work, try this one.

When you listen, you’ll note that what she’s advocating for is essentially a liberal arts education, wanting girls to think for themselves, radical in the environment from which she came. The group that shot her was pleased she didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize this week Jon Stewart may want to adopt her but she is reviled in her own hometown as not being Muslim enough or being a CIA plant.
***
My job is funded by state and federal monies. Which is to say I’m still working, but if this partial government shutdown continues for a while, that could be a problem. Yes, the House GOP’s little rule change guaranteed a shutdown. And Speaker of the House John Boehner, last weekend, acknowledged there was a clean continuing resolution – there are no budgets anymore, just a series of CRs – last July.

I suppose it’s ironic that the “reason” for the shutdown, Obamacare, was instituted anyway on October 1, with all its technical glitches. Perhaps a better strategy for the Republicans would have been to ENCOURAGE participation of the Affordable Care Act, hoping to crash the computers.

And yet, if you give in to cynicism about our democracy, our democracy steadily erodes. If it’s their plan to get so sick of it all that we throw up both our hands and let them do what they do, I must say it’s a brilliant strategy.
***
The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. I had never heard of this.

Sometimes you get a second chance to make a lasting impression.

Melanie has resigned herself “to needing help in private, but there is something that happens to me emotionally when I have to be helped to walk, or even be carried, in public. I do not handle it well.” Also: “Have you ever tried to pray for people who seriously want you dead?“

The War on Q, W, and X.

It’s been a year since Mark Evanier’s mom died.

Voice and Hammer: Harry Belafonte’s unfinished fight by Jeff Sharlet. Jeff is prominently mentioned in the article College Writers Exit ‘Bubble’. I worked with Jeff’s late mother Nancy, so I knew Jeff from when he’d beat me, legitimately, in SORRY when he was six.

Roger Ebert’s scalding review of a Rob Schneider film, and what came next.

Disney’s first African-American animator, Floyd Norman.

This Scottish ad for breast cancer awareness may be NSFW, and may save someone’s life.

The reason I like this article is not because of the specific issue, which the homophobia of the Barilla pasta guy, but because Mark Evanier explains the First Amendment so well.

I too was surprised by the lawsuit after the Smiths/Peanuts comic strip mashup. Well, not by the suit itself, but by the fact it came from the Smiths’ music publisher. The Peanuts people have long been very litigious; I DO remember the barn in question.

The back roads of western New York State. Also, Albany’s lost boardwalk.

Entitled vacationers, plus Betty White plugs Air New Zealand.

Nedroid’s Party Cat series.

Jaquandor answers my questions about politics, film casting, and end-of-writing poetry, among other topics.

QUESTION: Columbus discovered America, et al.

People falsely reported as dead on social media is practically a cliche.

Started musing – my, I muse a LOT – about how certain information is considered true, even though there is incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, such as Abner Doubleday inventing baseball, even though he clearly did not; yet, the ballpark in Cooperstown, home of the Baseball Hall of fame, remains as Doubleday Field.

I’m not sure there is a better example than that. There are quotes that are misstated. The one I find most interesting is “Nice guys finish last” by US baseball manager Leo Durocher (1906–1991). His remark was actually his reply to being asked his opinion of the 1946 New York Giants. He actually said: ‘Take a look at them. All nice guys. They’ll finish last. Nice guys – finish last.'” The words are there, but the emphasis is totally off.

How about this list of misattributed inventions? Lots of Thomas Edison. See they are picking on poor Al Gore over the Internet quote YET AGAIN.

This, of course, requires that a lot of people believe something as true. These top urban legends at About.com don’t work for me, because most of them I never heard of. People falsely reported as dead on social media is practically a cliche. It’s not like the old days when having someone reported dead required certain circumstances (see Mark Twain or Paul McCartney).

Nor do I count the deniers, of the Holocaust, e.g., because they seem to be a fringe element.

With Photoshop and Facebook, it’s easy to start a credible rumor, for fun, political mischief, or other criteria.

Tell me what obviously untrue info do you believe many, or most people believe?

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