Blinded by His Charm

Excerpts from the Huffington Post -

My Regrets About How I Asked O.J. Simpson About Domestic Abuse
by Roy Firestone 

Given the horrible events to come, I wish I had known more, questioned more, and I fault myself for that. I still do to this day. The clip which appears in the documentary makes it appear that I was chummy with Simpson. It makes it appear, even two years BEFORE the murders, that I was dismissing the seriousness of the issue of domestic violence.

~~~~~~~~~~

To be in any way seen as lighthearted, chummy or even mildly enabling some monstrous issue like that still haunts me 22 years later. The Simpson interview is one of the most tragic examples of how the media (including me) and the public trusted and accommodated their heroes, believing their mythology and perpetuating their deification. Even Marcia Clark told me that the LAPD was more interested in getting O.J.’s autograph at his home than investigating the warning signs of domestic violence. They weren’t doing their job.

Neither was he. My two cents.

Quote

"When you encourage rage you cannot then feign surprise when people become enraged."

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/a-day-of-infamy/

Perception

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

The Disturbingly Different Responses To The Disney And Cincinnati Zoo Tragedies
by Ranier Maningding

This week, at the Disney World Resort in Florida, a 2-year-old white boy was killed by an alligator. Last month, a 3-year-old Black child fell into a Gorilla exhibit.

Two similar tragedies, two DISTURBINGLY different responses from the public.

But this isn’t about gorillas and alligators. Nor is it about news media describing Matt Graves, the father of the white child, as an employee of a “tech company and a board member of the Chamber of Commerce” while depicting Deonne Dickerson, the father of the Black child, as an absent father with a lengthy criminal record.

Nah.

This is about our country’s OBSESSION with invalidating, patronizing and racializing Black parents. ALL BLACK PARENTS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ranier-maningding/ranier_b_10511692.html

Philly Having Fun

https://player.waywire.com/?id=X1DLPF1PPT2CWGK5

Your house needs this tape cutter.

Airplane black boxes, explained

A Crying Shame, Sanctioned by the Government

An excerpt from the New York Magazine: Science of Us as seen on Vox - 

The Tuskegee Experiment Kept Killing Black People Decades After It Ended

By Jesse Singal

934

ShareTweetShareShareEmailCommentPrint

As Science of Us has noted before, trust in the medical establishment is really, really important. It’s important both because the medical Establishment (usually) makes a good-faith effort to provide people with solid, empirically supported health information in a manner that hucksters don’t, but also for a simpler reason: If people don’t trust doctors, they won’t go in for checkups or for care when they need it.

For a particularly grim example, take the Tuskegee experiment. That’s the subject of a recently published National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Marcella Alsan, a public-health researcher at Stanford, and Marianne Wanamaker, a University of Tennessee economist. They summarize this “unethical and deadly experiment,” which they call “one of the most egregious examples of medical exploitation in U.S. history,”thusly:

For 40 years, between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) followed hundreds of poor, black men in Tuskegee Alabama, the majority of whom had syphilis, for the stated purpose of understanding the natural history of the disease. The men were denied highly effective treatment for their condition (most egregiously, penicillin, which became standard of care by the mid-1940s) and were actively discouraged from seeking medical advice from practitioners outside the study. Participants were subjected to blood draws, spinal taps, and, eventually, autopsies, by the study’s primarily white medical staff. Survivors later reported that study doctors diagnosed them with “bad blood” for which they believed they were being treated. Compensation for participation included hot meals, the guise of treatment, and burial payments. News of the Tuskegee study became public in 1972 in an exposé by Jean Heller of the Associated Press, and detailed narratives of the deception and its relationship to the medical establishment were widespread. By that point, the majority of the study’s victims were deceased, many from syphilis-related causes. [citations removed, but you can find them in the text itself]

Since the experiment, the authors point out, various public-health researchers have noticed that when they interview African-Americans about their views on the health system, they will often bring up Tuskegee unprompted — it left a deep scar on the country, yes, but on this population in particular. Why should you trust doctors, and particularly white doctors, when the government can allow something this awful to happen?

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/06/tuskegee-experiment-mistrust.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%206/16/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

My People

These ladies are the Western staff at my school.  We were having an end-of-the-year dinner at a local restaurant.  They are from Britain, South Africa, Ireland, and America and are a marvelous group.  I'm so fortunate to know and work with them.

Al Selaa School EMTs - Ruwais Mall - June 15, 2016

MEET A MUSLIM

Where Hoop Dreams are Handmade

Almost Christmas - Official Trailer (HD)

Instructions for Papa

How to Be a Father
These instructions are for me. Your mileage may vary.
by Ernio Hernandez

In some particular order:

You are officially no longer priority #1 or even #2. First rule about fatherhood is you never come first anymore. Thems the breaks, breeder.

Baby first. Mommy second. You third? Hahaha. No. You: last. Dead last.

Snacks. Always have snacks. Never in the entirety of my adult life (calculation pending) have I even used the word as much as I have in the past two years.

Breathe. Take a second, you only have one, but take it. Use it to breathe.

Allow for traffic. Getting out of the house takes at minimum (it’s never minimum) 10 minutes. Begin 5 minutes ago.

Hugs. Stop everything for hugs. Pee yourself, burn the toast, you’ll find the cat later. Don’t be the first to let go. Enjoy that moment. Savor the love now.

Go to bed. You can stay up and watch TV or write if it helps you feel person-like again, just know there will be consequences in the morning.

Your body is a wonderland. Swinging your child, doing airplanes, silly dances, horsey-rides, leg-hug walking, silly faces, the fake walking-down-the-stairs, row-your-boats, leg slide and, of course, the daddy shimmy.

~~~~~~~~~~

There's more.

https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/how-to-be-a-father-a15bcd6a2f69#.jcaiak3nr

Same Old Same Old

Follow the Money

An excerpt from Mother Jones -

Fully Loaded:  Inside the Shadowy World of America's 10 Biggest Gunmakers
By Josh Harkinson

They are all white, all middle-aged, and all men. A few live openly lavish lifestyles, but the majority fly under the radar. Rarely is there news about them in the mainstream media or even the trade press. Their obscurity would seem unremarkable if we were talking about the biggest manufacturers of auto accessories or heating systems. But these are America's top gunmakers—leaders of the nation's most controversial industry. They have kept their heads down and their fingerprints off regulations designed to protect their businesses—foremost a law that shields gun companies from liability for crimes committed with their products.

With this investigation, Mother Jones set out to break through the opacity surrounding the $8 billion firearms industry and the men who control it. While the three largest companies disclose some financials, the rest are privately held. Some are further shrouded by private-equity funds or shell corporations based in overseas tax havens. We mined manufacturing data and import statistics from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). We also examined obscure press clippings, court documents, private industry reports, and tax records from the Treasury Department. Together, the 10 companies we investigated produce more than 8 million firearms per year for buyers in the United States, accounting for more than two-thirds of the total market. (None of the companies responded to our requests for further information.)

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/fully-loaded-ten-biggest-gun-manufacturers-america

A Jailhouse Lawyer Changed the System

From The New Yorker -

HOME FREE
How a New York State prisoner became a jailhouse lawyer, and changed the system.
By Jennifer Gonnerman

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/20/derrick-hamilton-jailhouse-lawyer?mbid=nl_160614_daily&CNDID=27124505&spMailingID=9057107&spUserID=MTE0MzE0NDEyNDUyS0&spJobID=941371076&spReportId=OTQxMzcxMDc2S0

Bozoma!

Bozoma Saint John speaking at WWDC 2016 about Apple Music's redesign on June 13, 2016. JUSTIN KANEPS FOR WIRED

Fast forward to 1:10:23 to see this sho' nuff sista strut her stuff.  Love her!


Excerpts from Wired -

FOR THE FIRST hour or so, Apple’s annual WWDC conference was every bit as exciting as you’d expect. Which is to say, not very. A-list execs like Kevin Lynch, Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue droned on and on about updates to this, improvements to that. Then Bozoma Saint John took the stage.

It was amazing.

It’s not just that Saint John, head of marketing for Apple Music, was a black female executive appearing onstage at WWDC. It was the way she commanded the room—and the show—that blew everyone away. Moments after Cue introduced her, Saint John cued up The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” a song that is the antithesis of Apple’s tendency toward the milder fare of bands OneRepublic and U2. “We’re gonna make this whole auditorium rock,” she told the crowd. “One, two, three, rock!”

~~~~~~~~~~

Bozoma Saint John—”Boz” to her friends—is every bit as boss as her masterful performance suggests. She’s led Apple Music’s marketing division since April, 2014, a short three months after she joined Beats Music and it was acquired by Apple. But she’s no stranger to the music industry. Before joining Apple, she ran the music and entertainment marketing group at Pepsi-Cola’s North America division, where, according to the website XO Necole, she landed deals with the likes of Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, and Eminem. Oh, she also reportedly convinced Beyoncé to agree to perform at half-time during the Super Bowl in 2013. No big deal.

http://www.wired.com/2016/06/bozoma-saint-john-badass-long-apple/?mbid=nl_61416

A Mother's Sorrow Shared

An excerpt from Vox -

My 6-year-old daughter died at Sandy Hook. You never move on.
Updated by Nelba Márquez-Greene

I am waiting for the church to be as outraged about gun violence as much as we seem to be about who pees where in a Target bathroom.

"I am sorry that our tragedy here in Sandy Hook wasn't enough to save your loved ones."

Here is my message to those families in Florida:

I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. I am sorry that our tragedy here in Sandy Hook wasn't enough to save your loved ones. I tried, and I won't stop trying.

Don't you dare even listen to even one person who may insinuate that somehow this is your loved one’s fault because they were gay or any other reason. Nor is it God's wrath. They did that to us in Sandy Hook, too. And it broke my heart. You will receive love from a million places. Embrace it. Take good care of yourself. This will be a forever journey.

Some ugly will come your way too. When you speak up about gun violence in America, you get death threats. You get made fun of. You get people telling you your child's death isn't even real. You have to close down your personal Facebook account because you get tired of harassing messages. You block enough people on Twitter to fill a football stadium. You have to hire security at fundraising events because you don't know who will show up. Delete. Ignore. Let it go.

Your loss on Sunday will bring out the worst and the best in all of us. May we commit to being our best selves in honor of what you now bear.

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/14/11931484/orlando-shooting-sandy-hook

Mama Said

Today, June 15th, is my Mom's birthday.  She would have been 97.

This day, like all others, I'm reminded of the many pearls of wisdom she shared with my brothers and I while we were growing up.

Like . . .

---Tell me who you follow and I'll tell you who you are.

---Birds of a feather flock together.

---Where there's smoke, there's fire.

---No matter where you are or what you're doing, somebody's watching.  What do they see?

---Always do more than expected, and you'll always have a job.

---It's your responsibility to greet people, what they do in response matters little.

---The folks that give you advice don't pay for your mistakes.

---It takes two people to fight.  You have a choice on whether or not to engage.

And my favorite . . .

In response to my going away to college, which was unheard of in those days, Mom would say to those who questioned that decision,

"The same God who took care of her here, will take care of her wherever she goes."

It is this last one that stays with me the most and gives me peace.

Why Read?

Excerpts from Medium -

The Reading Habits of Ultra-Successful People

Want to know one habit ultra-successful people have in common?

They read. A lot.

In fact, when Warren Buffett was once asked about the key to success, he pointed to a stack of nearby books and said, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”
Buffett takes this habit to the extreme — he read between 600 and 1000 pages per day when he was beginning his investing career, and still devotes about 80% of each day to reading.

~~~~~~~~~~

And these aren’t just isolated examples. A study of 1200 wealthy people found that they all have reading as a pastime in common.

But successful people don’t just read anything. They are highly selective about what they read, opting to be educated over being entertained. They believe that books are a gateway to learning and knowledge.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are many examples of successful people dropping out of school or foregoing a formal education, but it is clear that they never stop learning. And reading is a key part of their success.

https://medium.com/life-learning/the-reading-habits-of-ultra-successful-people-d565b26f15f5#.mnzkgoplg

Quote

From Vox -

"If there are 300 million guns in the United States, and we impose a tax of $3,600 per gun on the current stock, we would eliminate the federal government deficit. But $3,600 is coming nowhere close to the potential damage that a single weapon could cause." [Stephen Williamson]