Hmmmmm . . .

An excerpt from The Washington Post - 

The big question about driverless cars no one seems able to answer

By Brian Fung

Wow. A lot of you guys had some very passionate responses to last week's news that the federal government had recognized Google's software, not the human passenger, as the "driver" in its self-driving cars. There was one, big theme running through many of your comments. See if you can identify it:

So does the software have to get a driver's license and insurance? –ikeaboy

So if I get drunk, get into my Googlemobile and crash into someone the software is going to jail? Seems awkward to put flash memory in with the other prisoners. –InAVanByTheRiver

Who is charged if there is a fatal accident and there is an occupant in the driverless car? What happens if there is a lawsuit? Who pays the fine or serves time if the driverless car is found guilty? –scoon42

All of these questions target the issue of liability, which is about to get very interesting. As computerized, self-driving cars come closer to fruition, car accidents are likely to become vastly more complex. What will happen when you get into a crash, and who will be to blame?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/02/17/the-big-question-about-driverless-cars-no-one-seems-to-have-an-answer-to/

Pelham High Double Amputee Wrestler Hasaan Hawthorne Wins State Title

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/22/this-teenage-wrestler-has-a-perfect-record-and-a-state-title-he-also-has-no-legs/?hpid=hp_no-name_morning-mix-story-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Wanted: A Good Home For a Horse

From The Washington Post - 

Free to a good home: Horses who have served their country

Quincy, one of two horses available for adoption,
waits while stalls are cleaned in the stables at Fort Myer in Arlington.
The Old Guard, the soldiers of Arlington National Cemetery,
are offering two horses for adoption. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)

He received good marks in his early days in the military: “quite impressive,” his supervisor once wrote. But after he kicked a few soldiers, he swiftly found himself unwelcome in the Army.

Meanwhile, his buddy started out with similarly good reviews — “a big morale booster” — but found his military service cut short by a painful foot condition.

Now, the two retirees are, like so many veterans leaving the service, looking for their next homes.

Preferably homes with lots of hay and some room in a barn.

“These guys did their service,” Staff Sgt. David Smith said. “It’s their time to be a horse.”

Kennedy and Quincy, highly trained horses who have served in the Army’s Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery, have finished their tours of duty. And both are up for adoption, free to a good home.

They have served in a role almost unique in the U.S. military, that of the caisson horse.

Caisson horses pull coffins to burials at Arlington, bringing former officers and service members killed in action in America’s wars to their grave sites with haunting uniformity and precision.

The choreographed procession, led by a riderless horse, is one of the most solemn and stylized rituals in the nation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/free-to-a-good-home-horses-who-have-served-their-country/2016/02/21/3de74d3a-d4f6-11e5-9823-02b905009f99_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_oldguardhorses-610pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

You Gotta Love Her!

Make Your Own Comic Book

Available at Amazon for $21.99.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IUAAK7U

Love Full Lips?

Just not on us.

~~~~~~~~~~

From Salon -

This picture posted on Instagram reveals a racist double standard: full lips are beautiful for white women but not for black women 

The lips of a black model were posted on social media and sparked hundreds of racist comments

http://media.salon.com/2016/02/fulllips.patrice.waite_.2.19.2016.mp4

What Debate?

An excerpt from Salon - 

Minorities and women largely shut out of encryption debate 

Though frequent targets of government surveillance, blacks and Muslims have little voice where it counts: D.C. 

PATRICK HOWELL O'NEILL, THE DAILY DOT

Surveillance in the 21st century deeply impacts minority communities in the United States, but they have almost no voice in the debate over spying and encryption compared to wealthy white males.

The latter group dominates the Washington, D.C., hearings, academic panels, and board room meetings where the most heavy-duty decision making is taking place, a Daily Dot review found.

~~~~~~~~~~

Minorities, on the other hand, have long been at the center of American surveillance, including when J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI put members of the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement under their watchful eye. Today, communities of Muslim and black Americans sit right at the center of American surveillance.

At a recent panel on the encryption debate in Austin, Texas, ACLU’s Principal Technologist Christopher Soghoian pointed out the disparity.

“This is a room filled with people who went to very good universities, most of whom probably make more than $100,000 per year, and many of whom already have a device in their pockets that encrypts their data by default,” he said. “The reason we’re having this debate is it looks like the poor and minorities and those who are most surveilled in our society are about to get encryption technology. And people are really upset.”

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/20/minorities_and_women_largely_shut_out_of_encryption_debate_partner/?source=newsletter

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Voting (HBO)

American Crime Story: The People vs. O. J. Simpson - Official Trailer

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember this drama unfolding before your eyes on live television.  But here's the thing, even with all of the prior knowledge, this miniseries is making this "must see" TV.  Definitely worth the watch.

My favorite scene in this clip (0.39 min.) is when OJ declares, "I'm not black.  I'm OJ."

Apologies if this is a repeat post.

On second thought . . . no apologies.

This is worth a second nod.

You're welcome.

What's Celebrated?

An excerpt from The New York Times -

What Does the Academy Value in a Black Performance?

By BRANDON K. THORPFEB. 19, 2016

When the Oscar nominations were announced last month, revealing that not one black actor was in the running, the resulting furor touched on the performances that critics said should have been considered: What about Idris Elba in “Beasts of No Nation”? Michael B. Jordan in “Creed”? Will Smith in “Concussion,” or one of the stars of “Straight Outta Compton”?

The uproar over #OscarsSoWhite made me curious. What does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences value in black performance? Black artists have been nominated for best actress or actor on 30 occasions, for work spanning 28 films. Over the last few weeks, I watched all of them.

These movies have a lot in common, not least that most were directed by white men. Only three were directed by black men and none by women. Perhaps these numbers aren’t surprising, given the well-known demographics of the film industry. Other numbers are more eye-opening.

Consider: In the history of the Oscars, 10 black women have been nominated for best actress, and nine of them played characters who are homeless or might soon become so. (The exception is Viola Davis, for the 2011 drama “The Help.”)

The first was Dorothy Dandridge, for “Carmen Jones” (1954). That musical drama, like the opera from which it derives, is mostly known as the story of a sexually rapacious young woman and her obsessive, ultimately murderous lover. But it’s also the story of a wily, prideful human running out of places to go. Late in the film, Carmen and her fugitive boyfriend hide out in a seedy Chicago apartment. There’s no money for rent, and soon they’ll be evicted. Carmen, who’s spent the movie working hard to seem carefree and fierce, tries her best to summon that look again as she sets out to scare up food and rent money.

Nearly every black best-actress nominee has faced a similar plight, right up through “Beasts of the Southern Wild” (2012), in which Quvenzhané Wallis played a little girl about to lose her home to a flood. No black woman has ever received a best-actress nomination for portraying an executive or even a character with a college degree. (Though Gabourey Sidibe’s character in “Precious,” from 2009, seems likely to get one eventually.)

All 10 performances for which black women have received best-actress nominations involve poor or lower-income characters, and half of those are penniless mothers. Two of the portrayals — Diana Ross’s incarnation of Billie Holiday in “Lady Sings the Blues” (1972) and Angela Bassett’s depiction of Tina Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1993) — are of singers who enjoy a measure of wealth at some point. But Holiday begins broke, and viewers know she’ll end up that way, while Tina Turner doesn’t have money of her own until the film’s last five minutes. The remaining characters are maids, sharecroppers, criminal-drifter types, impoverished housewives and destitute girls.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/what-does-the-academy-value-in-a-black-performance.html?hpw&rref=movies&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

AMERICAN MASTERS | B.B. King: The Life of Riley - trailer | PBS

THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLU...

Apple vs. FBI

An excerpt from Macworld -

The crux of the issue is should companies be required to build security circumvention technologies to expose their own customers? Not “assist law enforcement with existing tools,” but “build new tools.”

The FBI Director has been clear that the government wants back doors into our devices, even though the former head of the NSA disagrees and supports strong consumer encryption. One reason Apple is likely fighting this case so publicly is that it is a small legal step from requiring new circumvention technology, to building such access into devices. The FBI wants the precedent far more than they need the evidence, and this particular case is incredibly high profile and emotional.

The results will, without question, establish precedence beyond one killer’s iPhone.

http://www.macworld.com/article/3034355/ios/why-the-fbis-request-to-apple-will-affect-civil-rights-for-a-generation.html

MASTERPIECE | Downton Abbey: 10 Best Dowager Countess Zingers | PBS

We're All Speaking English But . . .

It's pretty safe to say that those of us here in the UAE from the US speak only one language - English.  Everyone else comes with two, three or more languages - which is an intriguing asset that I find myself longing for.

I remember when I first started teaching in Sacramento, there was the constant push to have the students speak English only.  They came to school with at least two languages, with most being fluent in their native tongue, whatever that happened to be.

But our mantra was "ENGLISH ONLY, ENGLISH ONLY."

Of course, before we allowed then to graduate from high school, we said they must learn a second language.

Then our mantra was "YOU MUST HAVE A SECOND LANGUAGE, YOU MUST HAVE A SECOND LANGUAGE."

But . . . but . . . but . . .

Did we forget that they came to us with a second language that we forbade them to use?

Such hypocrisy!

Ok.  Ok.

End of this rant.

~~~~~~~~~~

There's something else that I find interesting here.  That is, the English language itself.

At my school, nine of our twelve Western teachers come from South Africa, Ireland, and the UK.  We all speak English, but there are times we need a translator to understand what we're trying to say to each other.

It happens when we speak to each other, but also in our writings.

This was most evident when I had the teachers to write up supply orders for things they needed in their classes.  Invariably, I had to go to each of them to ask what they meant by this or that.  We were talking about the same thing, but we called them something totally different.

~~~~~~~~~~

Living abroad has been an ever-evolving eye-opening experience.

If there is one take-away, that is we in the US should absolutely encourage and foster a second language as a nation, but with that unlikely to happen, at the very least, we should make sure it's happening to the folks in our world.  Especially our kids.

More and more we're becoming a global society, and as such, we need to be equipped with the tools needed to comfortably move around the world.

Oh, how I wish that I'd paid more attention and appreciated the value of my high school Spanish classes.

All I remember is how to count to ten.

Somehow uno, dos, tres, .etc., seems woefully inadequate.

Probably because it is.

They Ought To Be In Prison

An excerpt from CAPTURED:  People in Prison Drawing People Who Should Be - 

For over a year, we asked people in prison to paint or draw people we felt should be in prison–the CEOs of companies destroying our environment, economy, and society.

Here are the results. Click on the images to see the crimes committed by both the companies and the artists.

We present this project to help expose crimes masquerading as commerce.

https://thecapturedproject.com/?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_slateplusweekly

Why Aren't All the Primaries on the Same Day?

The Boss

From The Root - 

Ann-Marie Campbell has been in her job as executive vice president of Home Depot’s U.S. stores since the top of the month. In her new post, Campbell will oversee almost 400,000 employees in 2,000 stores. She replaced veteran exec Marc Powers in mid-January.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/02/jamaican_woman_to_head_all_home_depot_stores_in_us.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

All of It

This article from The Root was just too good to cherry pick, so here it is in its entirety. I've added bold to the last paragraph, as this one sums up the life and times of Antonin Scalia perfectly.

H/T Ben

~~~~~~~~~~

Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia was racist, charismatic, misogynist, intelligent, homoantagonistic, witty, a good friend and a judicial terrorist.

He was all these things, multifaceted in the ways that all human beings are, and he should be remembered as such. Still, in the days since his death, the communities he attacked viciously with his decisions over the course of his 30 years on the Supreme Court have been taken to task for dancing on his grave.

Though I didn’t cheer Scalia’s death, I fully understand the catharsis many people experienced when the news was announced that he was found dead in his bed with a pillow over his head at a Texas ranch Feb. 13. Still, every vogue, wobble and Southside has been countered by just as many near-hagiographic eulogies. And it is this—this romanticizing and whitewashing of his toxic legacy that has taken root in conservative circles—that is dangerous in the same way that Texas textbooks defining the peculiar institution of slavery as migrant work are.

From his perch as justice on the highest court in the land, Scalia held fast to his beliefs that white, Christian, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual men are the only class of citizen that matters; while “invented minorities,” women who should be “treated differently,” black people only capable of succeeding at “slower” and “lesser” universities, and “unwanted” immigrants do not deserve protection under the law.

For that reason alone, some have called him a “conservative lion”; I call him a bigot. These two things are not, have never been and will never be, mutually exclusive.

This Scalia narrative that has emerged is churned out by the same disingenuous, white supremacist mechanisms that have people calling Martin passive and Malcolm violent. It’s the same system that wanted us to believe that Rosa Parks just randomly decided not to give up her seat on the bus, while failing to mention that she worked tirelessly to report sexual violence that black women were and continue to experience at the fists and bodies of racist misogynists in America.

This is the same well-oiled and fine-tuned machine that wants us to celebrate Abraham Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator,” when he didn’t give a damn about enslaved Africans past their political (in)convenience.

This is the same dishonest system that will have you thinking that the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was driven by hatred of white people, instead of love for black children starved for food and freedom. It’s the same contorted system that wants us to believe that Thomas Jefferson was simply a visionary and not a rapist. It is the same system eager to say that Assata did it, but George Zimmerman, Darren Wilson, Timothy Loehmann and Daniel Pantaleo did not.

And it is this same system that wants us to believe that the Confederate flag is drenched in the blood of black people, but that the United States flag, waving gently over the genocide of black, brown and indigenous people, is pristine.

We don’t have time for sociopolitical distortions and half-truths; history lives in the now.

In 2005, Scalia had this to say about his storied career: “I don’t worry about my legacy. Just do your job right, and who cares?”

This is where I agree with him. Though it may have been politically necessary for President Barack Obama to call Scalia’s service “extraordinary,” as journalists, writers, truth-seekers and truth-tellers, our only job is to make it plain and get it right. That job is not always polite and it’s definitely not always welcomed. Scalia may have encouraged people to be “fools for Christ,” but we don’t have to be the fools who protect his legacy. I have no desire to have to explain to my three sons years from now—when they come home, bright-eyed, talking about a charming, beloved judge named Scalia—that somebody lied.

But I will.

To again paraphrase Dr. King, it’s important that we get the language right. It’s important that we understand that everybody is good to somebody, but that doesn’t mean they’re good to or for all of us. It’s critical that we hold in tension that a man who possessed keen wit, a brilliant mind, a hearty laugh and a family who loves him can also be a vessel of hate. Our lives depend on it.

So my sincere condolences go out to Antonin Scalia’s friends and family. But my solidarity goes to those who realize that there is one less white supremacist in the world lynching our humanity not with a rope and tree, but with a robe and bench, all in the name of justice.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/02/call_a_thing_a_thing_scalia_s_judicial_terrorism_should_not_be_celebrated.html?wpisrc=topstories

A Pioneering Pilot

From BlackAmericaWeb - 

Ohio, often referred to as the birthplace of aviation, has battled with North Carolina over that distinction for many years. But for pioneering aviator Lonnie Carmon, it appears that he will forever stand as the first African-American to fly in Central Ohio in an aircraft he built from scratch.

According to accounts from Carmon’s family and several historical societies, Carmon’s historic flight took place in 1926. What makes Carmon’s achievement all the more impressive is that he built his plane using piles of material he obtained from his recycling business.

A so-called “junk man,” people handed over their unwanted goods to Carmon who refurbished and resold them at his Columbus home. As told by his granddaughter Yvette Davis, Carmon came across a motorcycle engine and began crafting his plane around it. Without any prior training or blueprints, the naturally gifted Carmon built a fully functional aircraft.

Carmon stored his plane at a farm in the nearby Black community of Urbancrest, south of Columbus. Every weekend, he would take his plane out and fly over his town which thrilled his the residents and his family. Eventually, Carmon was able to purchase a single engine Piper Club aircraft.

http://blackamericaweb.com/2016/02/16/little-known-black-history-fact-lonnie-carmon/?omcamp=es-baw-nl&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=BAW%20Subscribers%20%28Daily%29