This Way to 'Conjunction Junction'

This NASA Genius Invented the Super Soaker

This is Fun?

Excerpts from Slate -

Spring Break’s Cleanup Crew

It’s the worst time to be a hotel housekeeper in Miami. The rest of the year’s pretty bad, too.

At the four-star Fontainebleau Miami Beach, the iconic, ocean-facing hotel immortalized in movies such as Goldfinger and Scarface, the service can feel as opulent as the vintage decor. While guests shop or lounge poolside, a small army of housekeepers works its way up and down the angular white and turquoise towers, cleaning about a dozen rooms each over the course of a day.

Among them is Adelle Sile, a Haitian-born housekeeper with cherry-hued corkscrew curls, a compact frame, and deep-set eyes. Around this time of year, thanks to the influx of spring break and Easter break vacationers, the time she has to clean each room during her eight-hour shift gets squeezed as guests stretch their mornings to the final minutes before checkout. When she does finally get in, she sometimes opens the door to find vomit, empty bottles, crack pipes, marijuana buds, and makeshift mattresses of cushions and blankets strewn about—the season’s bacchanalian detritus.

“My back [is] hurting me. Picking up trash, picking up trash, trash everywhere, like this, like this,” Sile said recently, demonstrating the scene in her modest, pleather-upholstered living room in her working-class immigrant neighborhood in North Miami. By the end of the day, she said in a Creole-inflected drawl, “My body dead.” (The Fontainebleau declined to comment for this article.)

~~~~~~~~~~

“Spring break is all about partying, getting drunk, acting wild. … And the housekeepers, they’re the ones that have to do the cleaning up after,” said Kandiz Lamb, an organizer with the hospitality workers union Unite Here, which represents workers at a handful of area hotels and casinos. “It’s all kind of stuff that happens. People getting so drunk [they’re] like almost drowning in pools, falling asleep in hallways, aggressive, getting into fights in the hallways.”

~~~~~~~~~~

And the mess rains down when spring break season hits. “People have shit themselves, they’ve bled a lot. We’ve had to throw away everything from an entire room—pillows, everything—because they’ve shit everywhere,” R. said in a recent interview after work.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_grind/2016/03/spring_break_in_miami_is_the_worst_time_to_be_a_hotel_maid.html?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_tis

Race Trumps Class

An excerpt from The Washington Post -

Poor white kids are less likely to go to prison than rich black kids

It's a fact that people of color are worse off than white Americans in all kinds of ways, but there is little agreement on why. Some see those disparities as a consequence of racial discrimination in schools, the courts and the workplace, both in the past and present. Others argue that economic inequalities are really the cause, and that public policy should help the poor no matter their race or ethnicity. When it comes to affirmative action in college admissions, for example, many say that children from poor, white families should receive preferential treatment, as well.

In some ways, though, discrimination against people of color is more complicated and fundamental than economic inequality. A stark new finding epitomizes that reality: In recent decades, rich black kids have been more likely to go to prison than poor white kids.

"Race trumps class, at least when it comes to incarceration," said Darrick Hamilton of the New School, one of the researchers who produced the study.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-white-kids-are-less-likely-to-go-to-prison-than-rich-black-kids/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%203/25/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Greetings!

My apologies for my absence.  I was under the weather, and then out of town for a few days.

We're on spring break, so I took this opportunity to take care of some business in Qatar, a neighboring country.

It is one of the countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, or the GCC, as it is commonly known.  The countries are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman and they all border the Persian Gulf. Conspicuously absent from this group is Iraq, which also borders the Persian Gulf.

Qatar is the site of the 2022 World Cup, and pictures from my hotel room show some of the massive building projects underway in preparation of this feat.  It's ambitious, to be sure.

This was taken from my hotel room.
There's a parking lot full of construction vehicles,
and across the highway, scaffolding litters the landscape.

No matter where I go, it's always good to get back home.

Here's wishing you a belated Happy Easter.

More soon.

Witness Protection

From Atlas Obscura - 

The Strange Tale of Echo, the Parrot Who Saw Too Much

A mob's pet is said to be in hiding. Could the bird be a witness in court?BByLaurel Braitman MARCH 22, 2016

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a strange message. It was imperative, she said, that I get in touch with a guy named Geoffrey Mitchell. Geoffrey lives in the Bay Area and works for Caltrans—the California Department of Public Transportation. But before that, he worked as a marine biologist for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in the swamplands around Lake Charles. 

That’s, he told me, where he heard about the parrot in a witness protection program.

Mitchell’s source was a woman named Suzy Heck, founder and director of an animal rehabilitation center called Heck Haven that takes in roughly 1,000 animals a year. When I called her, Heck explained that usually she rehabs wildlife like injured raccoons or orphaned baby squirrels, but every once in a while a different sort of animal shows up.

One afternoon in the mid-‘90s, she recalls, a wildlife rehabber friend of hers from New Orleans named Corina King arrived with a male parrot in a cage, a beautiful severe macaw—green with red shoulders—named Echo. He was medium-sized, a little thin and knew dozens of words. King told Heck that the bird needed to lay low for a while, and that she should keep his presence at the center a secret.

“It was all very hush hush,” Heck says, “and I didn’t know how long he was going to stay with me.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The mystery continues below.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-strange-tale-of-echo-the-parrot-who-saw-too-much?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=0c18cb28e6-Newsletter_3_24_20163_23_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-0c18cb28e6-59905913&ct=t(Newsletter_3_24_20163_23_2016)&mc_cid=0c18cb28e6&mc_eid=866176a63f

Keeping the Beat

An excerpt from Quanta Magazine -

The Beasts That Keep the Beat

New insights from neuroscience — aided by a small zoo’s worth of dancing animals — are revealing the biological origins of rhythm.

Snowball’s public debut also caught the attention of two scientists at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, Calif. John Iversen and Aniruddh Patel were interested in the evolutionary origins and neuroscience of rhythm and music. At the time, there was no documented evidence that nonhuman animals could dance — or, in more scientific terms, that they could “entrain” their movements to an external beat. “We saw this video, and it really knocked us out — it was the first time we had ever seen this,” Iversen said. “As scientists, you love these kinds of moments.”

Iversen and Patel tested Snowball in controlled experiments, altering the tempos of his favorite songs and observing how he responded without any training or encouragement. Snowball danced in bouts, rather than continuously, but frame-by-frame video analysis confirmed that he adapted his movements to the match the altered beats. Soon after, other studies by separate research teams showed that numerous species of parrots could entrain to a beat, as could elephants. Monkeys, on the other hand, did not display much rhythmic talent in the lab.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160322-the-beasts-that-keep-the-beat/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=March%2023%2C%202016&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Endearing or Creepy?

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-screening-room-dollhouse?mbid=nl_160322_Daily&CNDID=27124505&spMailingID=8697477&spUserID=MTE0MzE0NDEyNDUyS0&spJobID=882461195&spReportId=ODgyNDYxMTk1S0

Google Doodle Winner

Excerpts from The Washington Post -

Today’s winning Google Doodle invoking Black Lives Matter was designed by a high school sophomore

Akilah, a sophomore at Eastern Senior High School in Northeast Washington, has just been named Google’s big winner in the national contest, topping the 53 state and territory champions, whose work had been culled from about 100,000 student entries.

~~~~~~~~~~

This year’s contest theme was: “What makes me…me.” Akilah drew a box-braided Doodle, titled “My Afrocentric Life,” using color pencils, black crayons and Sharpie markers. The Doodle includes symbols of black heritage and signs representing the Black Lives Matter movement.

“Although it felt like forever making this picture, it only took me about two weeks,” Akilah told Comic Riffs last month.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/03/21/d-c-student-wins-national-google-doodle-contest-with-art-that-invokes-black-lives-matter/

Linguistic Lesson

An excerpt from The Atlantic -

America Needs ‘Y’all’

English has no standard second-person plural word, and it’s time for that to change.

How y’all doing?

A greeting as Southern as a bowl of grits, it rolls off the tongue in a single open-mouth utterance. Sweeter than honey and often saturated with hidden meaning, it can open up a dialogue with a roomful of strangers with ease.

Part of that ease hinges on the incredible versatility of the phrase’s most important word. “Y’all,” that strange regional and ethnic conjunction, offers a simplicity to speech that can’t be found elsewhere. It is a magnificently elegant linguistic creation.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/the-case-for-yall/473277/

Ben's Interview

http://www.kcra.com/news/sacramento-man-recounts-blown-out-brussels-airport/38644856

H/T Mark Ambrose

Ben Was at the Airport in Brussels Today

Thank God, he's OK.

Ben and four colleagues had just landed in Brussels and entered the airport terminal when they heard an announcement to turn around and head in the opposite direction.  Not sure what was happening, they complied.  Moments later another announcement sent them in yet another direction.  The next announcement had them exiting the building where they stood on the tarmac wondering what in the world was happening.

The evacuation was calm, but the look on the airport employees faces let them know something serious had gone down.

Thousands of people attempting to call or get online clogged the cell service, so they continued to be in the dark.  He and his friends decided to move away from the crowd as much as possible and assess the situation.

They still didn't know the extent of the damage but knew they needed to get away from the airport.

It was at about this time cell service came back online, and then they could see they were in the middle of chaos caused by a bomb.  Two bombs in fact.

One of his colleagues thought to contact their Berlin office and the folks there were able to secure them hotel rooms about five minutes away.  A cab miraculously appeared, taking them there.  That's where he was when he contacted me.

I knew he was traveling, but I didn't realize he was going to Brussels, so when I got his email, I was in shock.

Truth be told, so was he.

Ben is my living, breathing miracle.

This is the third time his life has been spared.

He was living in Indonesia in 2004 when the tsunami hit but had gone to Europe for training.  On his way back to Indonesia, he stopped by Sacramento, to spend Christmas with me.  Also, there was a last minute problem with his visa; that would have delayed him returning to Indonesia anyway.

So when the tsunami struck, he was home.

There was massive destruction in the country, so Ben never did return to Indonesia but was transferred to Texas instead.

Seven months later, in July 2005, while living outside of Fort Worth, Ben was struck by an 18-wheeler as a pedestrian while on the job.  He was put in a medically induced coma, and for the first two weeks, we weren't sure he was going to make it.   Thank God, twenty-three surgeries later, he's perfectly fine.

And now this tragedy today.

There was no doubt before, but today's incident seals it.  Ben is my miracle.

God is watching over my child.

May He continue to watch over us all.

Somebody Screwed Up

The wrong lady was cremated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/nyregion/wrong-woman-cremated-bronx.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0

A Film School at Wiley College

From The Root -

Most film and history buffs know Wiley College as the setting for the film The Great Debaters. But now the HBCU in East Texas will be known for having The Birth of a Nation’s Nate Parker as the creator of the college’s film and drama school.

Parker announced the launch of the new school Sunday and is paving the way for students attending the college who are interested in film and drama careers.

“The hope is that we cover all aspects of filmmaking, from sound, lighting and cinematography 

to just studying film specifically with the cultural component and the history of film,” Parker said.

“You control the moving picture, you control the masses. So really getting them rallied around the idea of reclaiming the narrative of America, specifically through the eyes of people of color,” Parker continued.

The first classes will be offered in the fall, but 30 lucky high school and college seniors get to test out the program during a nine-day summer institute.

This is a huge step and should be applauded. How many other Hollywood people can say they started their own school at a college?

By the way, you’ll be able to hear Wiley College’s choir perform in the upcoming release of Parker’s The Birth of a Nation.

http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2016/03/filmmaker_nate_parker_launches_school_dedicated_to_film_and_drama_at_texas.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiley_College

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Border Wall (HBO)

A Classic Retold

From Slate - 

If You Give a Judge a Meeting

A children’s tale by Sen. Chuck Grassley.

If you give a judge a meeting,
he’s going to ask for a glass of milk,
because he is probably very thirsty from that one time you compared him to Idi Amin.

When you give him the meeting,
he’ll probably ask you for a confirmation hearing.
He may also ask for a bendy straw,
because it’s entirely possible that having attempted to take guns away from the American electorate,
he now feels the need to defend himself and his family with blunt plastic.

When he’s finished, he’ll ask for a napkin,
to clean up the “toxic environment” that your colleagues say is keeping you from considering his nomination.  

After all that toxicity gets cleaned up,
he’ll ask you for a vote in the Judiciary Committee, and you will have no principled reason to say no.

When he’s done with his Judiciary Committee vote,
he will probably ask you for an up-or-down vote in the full Senate.

Natalie Matthews-Ramo

He may also remember the time your friend Orrin Hatch called him “a fine nominee,”
and said, “I know him personally, I know of his integrity, I know of his legal ability, I know of his honesty, I know of his acumen, and he belongs on the court.”
And he’ll wonder, “What changed?”

So then he’ll ask you for a mirror,
because he may want to look in a mirror,
to make sure that he’s still himself,
and not that vicious Ugandan dictator you mentioned.

Once he sees that he’s not a dictator,
he will probably ask to be confirmed.
Then he’ll be pretty tired,
and ask to take a nap.
You’ll have to fix up a little napping spot for him with a blanket and a pillow.
He’ll crawl in, make himself comfortable, and fluff the pillow a few times.
He’ll probably ask you to read him an amicus brief.

And, instead, you can read to him from one of those confusing interviews,
where you said it wouldn’t be intellectually honest to confirm him before November,
and that it will be intellectually honest to confirm him after November.

If you do hold that vote and he is confirmed,
he might notice his hair needs a trim.
So he’ll probably ask for a pair of nail scissors. Because it will turn out that this former prosecutor and centrist jurist
is in fact a wild-eyed, long-haired hippie Che Guevara character,
just as you suspected all along.

And once he’s on the court,
he will be on there for 12 million years.
And he will likely ask for a broom
to sweep up liberty and life and happiness as we know it.
He’ll also want to ensure that liberty is imperiled long into the future,
probably even after Obama is no longer president.
And the prospect of sweeping long into the future will lead him to ask for a glass of milk.
Because.
Well, you know.
Milk.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2016/03/_if_you_give_a_judge_a_meeting_by_chuck_grassley.html?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_tis

That's Not Good

From Wired - 


Radio Attack Lets Hackers Steal 24 Different Car Models

FOR YEARS, CAR owners with keyless entry systems have reported thieves approaching their vehicles with mysterious devices and effortlessly opening them in seconds. After having his Prius burgled repeatedly outside his Los Angeles home, the New York Times‘ former tech columnist Nick Bilton came to the conclusion that the thieves must be amplifying the signal from the key fob in the house to trick his car’s keyless entry system into thinking the key was in the thieves’ hand. He eventually resorted to keeping his keys in the freezer.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/study-finds-24-car-models-open-unlocking-ignition-hack/?mbid=nl_32116

Carnival is Sailing to Cuba!

From USA Today -

It's official: Cruise giant Carnival Corp. (CCL) will launch its first voyages from the USA to Cuba in May.

The parent company of Carnival, Princess and eight other cruise brands on Monday said the Cuban government had approved its previously announced plans to begin sailings to the island nation out of Miami.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2016/03/21/cuba-cruise-carnival-fathom/82087618/?csp=breakingnews

Castro in Harlem

Excerpts from The New Republic -

When Castro Came to Harlem

The Cuban leader’s last visit to the U.S. before the 1961 diplomatic fallout can tell us a lot about our present historic moment.

On September 18, 1960, four months before the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Cuba and 56 years before Barack Obama would become the first sitting American president in almost a century to step foot on Cuban soil, Fidel Castro arrived in New York City for the 15th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

~~~~~~~~~~

The reception that awaited him the following fall wasn’t nearly so warm. Castro and his bohemian entourage got off to a bad start with management at the elite Shelbourne Hotel, which allegedly demanded an exorbitant advance ahead of the Cuban delegation’s stay. Soon, New York tabloids were circulating reports that these “uncouth primitives” had “killed, plucked, and cooked chickens in their rooms at the Shelbourne and extinguished cigars on expensive carpets.” One subsequent Cuban defector later claimed that Castro had staged the drama. In any case, the Cubans left the Shelbourne, checking in instead at the Hotel Theresa, up past 124th Street in Harlem.

Castro’s decision to relocate his contingent to the heart of black New York quickened the falling out to come and presaged key pillars of Cuban foreign policy over the course of the next half-century: the explicit conflation of Cuban sovereignty with worldwide liberation struggles, particularly in Africa, and the strategic leveraging of U.S. moral hypocrisy in service of revolutionary ideology. Ploy or not, writes historian Brenda Gayle Plummer, the move “constituted a watershed” in U.S.-Cuban diplomacy, “not only because it coincided with a critical juncture in the history of U.S. race relations, but also because it marked a departure in conventional ways of perceiving, and prosecuting, the Cold War.”


~~~~~~~~~~

Harlem was a more gracious host to Castro than high-society Midtown had been. Crowds gathered outside the Hotel Theresa, as the honored guest held court in his room. He received official visits from foreign leaders—like Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru—as well as American civil rights figures, such as Malcolm X, New York NAACP President Joseph Overton, and, according to some reports, Jackie Robinson. Juan Almeida Bosque, the Afro-Cuban army commandante, became an instant icon, with throngs of people trailing behind him on the street.

~~~~~~~~~~

But to the extent Castro’s visit was a calculated, self-serving production, that didn’t negate its deeper political significance. As Plummer, the historian, explains, “Attentions from foreign dignitaries affirmed Harlem’s positive identity at a time when only a few scholars and black nationalists appreciated its history.” Writing for the local Amsterdam News at the time, James L. Hicks commented that, “Though many Harlemites are far too smart to admit it publicly, Castro’s move to the Theresa and Khrushchev’s decision to visit him gave the Negroes of Harlem one of the biggest ‘lifts’ they have had in the cold racial war with the white man.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/131793/castro-came-harlem?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=TNR%20Daily%20Newsletter

One Man's Trash

From Atlas Obscura -

Fascinating Photos from the Secret Trash Collection in a New York Sanitation Garage

Garbage can be beautiful, if sorted correctly.

By Dylan Thuras

 

On the second floor of a nondescript warehouse owned by New York City's Sanitation Department in East Harlem is a treasure trove—filled with other people's trash.

Most of the building is used as a depot for garbage trucks, but there's a secret collection that takes over an entire floor. The space is populated by a mind-bogglingly wide array of items: a bestiary of Tamagotchis, Furbies; dozens of Pez dispensers; female weight lifting trophies; 8-track tapes; plates, paintings, sporting equipment and much more.

This is the Treasures in the Trash collection, created entirely out of objects found by Nelson Molina, a now-retired sanitation worker, who began by decorating his locker. Collected over 30 years, it is a visual explosion, organized by type, color, and size. Recently, Atlas Obscura had the chance to visit the collection with the New York Adventure Club, take some photos, and revel in the vast creative possibilities of trash.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fascinating-photos-from-the-secret-trash-collection-in-a-new-york-sanitation-garage?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=71529a08ea-Newsletter_3_21_20163_18_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-71529a08ea-59905913&ct=t(Newsletter_3_21_20163_18_2016)&mc_cid=71529a08ea&mc_eid=866176a63f