Thursday, August 10, 2017
A Better Bus?
From the Washington Post -
Can a better night’s sleep in a ‘hipster’ bus replace flying?
By Peter Holley
For many people, moving between major hubs that are just far enough away to create complications — think Los Angeles to San Francisco, for instance — is a regular travel headache.
Tom Currier calls it the “500-mile problem” and now, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur and his partner, Gaetano Crupi, say they have a solution. It’s called “Cabin” — a double-decker, luxury bus line with WiFi, a comfy lounge and sleeping pods that offer the same pressed sheets you’ll find at the Ritz Carlton.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/08/10/can-a-better-nights-sleep-in-a-hipster-bus-replace-flying/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_bus-1120pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.94fcf5e78559
Can a better night’s sleep in a ‘hipster’ bus replace flying?
By Peter Holley
For many people, moving between major hubs that are just far enough away to create complications — think Los Angeles to San Francisco, for instance — is a regular travel headache.
Tom Currier calls it the “500-mile problem” and now, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur and his partner, Gaetano Crupi, say they have a solution. It’s called “Cabin” — a double-decker, luxury bus line with WiFi, a comfy lounge and sleeping pods that offer the same pressed sheets you’ll find at the Ritz Carlton.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/08/10/can-a-better-nights-sleep-in-a-hipster-bus-replace-flying/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_bus-1120pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.94fcf5e78559
History Lesson
An excerpt from Atlas Obscura -
The Best Trick U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves Ever Pulled on a Criminal
A particularly glorious example of “fake it ‘til you make it.”
BY ERIC GRUNDHAUSER
THE AMERICAN OLD WEST WAS a fertile cauldron for myth and legend, producing such fantastical figures as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. But while many folk heroes of the era may have been embellished-unto-fable, or completely dreamt up, the legendary Wild West figure Bass Reeves was absolutely real, even if his exploits sound like tall tales.
Reeves was one of the most remarkable figures of the Old West, serving as a deputy U.S. Marshal from 1875 to 1907, mostly in and around the regrettable Indian Territory, which once made up much of what is now Oklahoma.
Born into slavery, Reeves escaped from the slave owner George Reeves at some point during the Civil War, supposedly knocking out his so-called “master” in a dispute over cards. Bass then fled into Indian Territory where, despite never having had the opportunity to learn to read, he learned the land and languages of the Cherokee, Seminole, and major tribes that had been forced to relocate to the region. After the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, abolishing slavery, Reeves was finally able to settle down at an Arkansas farm and start a family. He and his wife Nellie would have almost a dozen kids while working their peaceful homestead, but for Bass, the legend was just beginning.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bass-reeves-wild-west-letter-trick?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=eeb0bfdbad-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-eeb0bfdbad-63562045&ct=t(Newsletter_8_10_2017)&mc_cid=eeb0bfdbad&mc_eid=866176a63f
The Best Trick U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves Ever Pulled on a Criminal
A particularly glorious example of “fake it ‘til you make it.”
BY ERIC GRUNDHAUSER
 | |
| Bass Reeves, wearing his iconic push broom mustache. JUNKYARDSPARKLE/PUBLIC DOMAIN |
THE AMERICAN OLD WEST WAS a fertile cauldron for myth and legend, producing such fantastical figures as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. But while many folk heroes of the era may have been embellished-unto-fable, or completely dreamt up, the legendary Wild West figure Bass Reeves was absolutely real, even if his exploits sound like tall tales.
Reeves was one of the most remarkable figures of the Old West, serving as a deputy U.S. Marshal from 1875 to 1907, mostly in and around the regrettable Indian Territory, which once made up much of what is now Oklahoma.
Born into slavery, Reeves escaped from the slave owner George Reeves at some point during the Civil War, supposedly knocking out his so-called “master” in a dispute over cards. Bass then fled into Indian Territory where, despite never having had the opportunity to learn to read, he learned the land and languages of the Cherokee, Seminole, and major tribes that had been forced to relocate to the region. After the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, abolishing slavery, Reeves was finally able to settle down at an Arkansas farm and start a family. He and his wife Nellie would have almost a dozen kids while working their peaceful homestead, but for Bass, the legend was just beginning.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bass-reeves-wild-west-letter-trick?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=eeb0bfdbad-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-eeb0bfdbad-63562045&ct=t(Newsletter_8_10_2017)&mc_cid=eeb0bfdbad&mc_eid=866176a63f
Remembering the Korean War
An excerpt form the Intercept - H/T Ben
Why Do North Koreans Hate Us? One Reason — They Remember the Korean War.
By Mehdi Hasan
“The hate, though,” as longtime North Korea watcher Blaine Harden observed in the Washington Post, “is not all manufactured.” Some of it, he wrote, “is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.”
Forgets as in the “forgotten war.” Yes, the Korean War. Remember that? The one wedged between World War II and the Vietnam War? The first “hot” war of the Cold War, which took place between 1950 and 1953, and which has since been conveniently airbrushed from most discussions and debates about the “crazy” and “insane” regime in Pyongyang? Forgotten despite the fact that this particular war isn’t even over — it was halted by an armistice agreement, not a peace treaty — and despite the fact that the conflict saw the United States engage in numerous war crimes, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, continue to shape the way North Koreans view the United States, even if the residents of the United States remain blissfully ignorant of their country’s belligerent past.
For the record, it was the North Koreans, and not the Americans or their South Korean allies, who started the war in June 1950, when they crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the south. Nevertheless, “What hardly any Americans know or remember,” University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings writes in his book “The Korean War: A History,” “is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.”
How many Americans, for example, are aware of the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean peninsula more bombs — 635,000 tons — and napalm — 32,557 tons — than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II?
How many Americans know that “over a period of three years or so,” to quote Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, “we killed off … 20 percent of the population”?
https://theintercept.com/2017/05/03/why-do-north-koreans-hate-us-one-reason-they-remember-the-korean-war/
Why Do North Koreans Hate Us? One Reason — They Remember the Korean War.
By Mehdi Hasan
“The hate, though,” as longtime North Korea watcher Blaine Harden observed in the Washington Post, “is not all manufactured.” Some of it, he wrote, “is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.”
Forgets as in the “forgotten war.” Yes, the Korean War. Remember that? The one wedged between World War II and the Vietnam War? The first “hot” war of the Cold War, which took place between 1950 and 1953, and which has since been conveniently airbrushed from most discussions and debates about the “crazy” and “insane” regime in Pyongyang? Forgotten despite the fact that this particular war isn’t even over — it was halted by an armistice agreement, not a peace treaty — and despite the fact that the conflict saw the United States engage in numerous war crimes, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, continue to shape the way North Koreans view the United States, even if the residents of the United States remain blissfully ignorant of their country’s belligerent past.
For the record, it was the North Koreans, and not the Americans or their South Korean allies, who started the war in June 1950, when they crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the south. Nevertheless, “What hardly any Americans know or remember,” University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings writes in his book “The Korean War: A History,” “is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.”
How many Americans, for example, are aware of the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean peninsula more bombs — 635,000 tons — and napalm — 32,557 tons — than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II?
How many Americans know that “over a period of three years or so,” to quote Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, “we killed off … 20 percent of the population”?
https://theintercept.com/2017/05/03/why-do-north-koreans-hate-us-one-reason-they-remember-the-korean-war/
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
He Has Proven Himself
An excerpt from the NY Times -
Admit This Ex-Con to the Connecticut Bar
By BARI WEISS
In 1996, when Reginald Dwayne Betts was being sentenced to nine years in prison for a carjacking, the judge handing down the ruling told the 16 year old: “I don’t have any illusions that the penitentiary is going to help you, but you can get something out of it if you want to.”
The judge probably had, at best, a high school equivalency diploma in mind for Mr. Betts. Mr. Betts had bigger ambitions.
It began with a book called “The Black Poets,” which someone slipped under his cell door during the year he spent in solitary confinement. “That’s the book that changed my life,” he has said of the anthology. “It introduced me to Etheridge Knight, to Rob Hayden, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez and so many countless black writers and black poets that really shaped who it is that I wanted to be in the world.”
After his release in 2005, he wrote two books of critically acclaimed poetry and a memoir. He got a B.A. and an M.F.A., and became a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard. Last May, he graduated from Yale Law School. Oh, and along the way, he became a husband and a father to two boys; tellingly, this is the first accomplishment he lists on his website’s biography page.
~~~~~~~~~~
Dwayne Betts is the kind of man who should be receiving awards from the bar association of Connecticut. Instead, he hasn’t been admitted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/opinion/admit-this-ex-con-to-the-connecticut-bar.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0
Admit This Ex-Con to the Connecticut Bar
By BARI WEISS
In 1996, when Reginald Dwayne Betts was being sentenced to nine years in prison for a carjacking, the judge handing down the ruling told the 16 year old: “I don’t have any illusions that the penitentiary is going to help you, but you can get something out of it if you want to.”
The judge probably had, at best, a high school equivalency diploma in mind for Mr. Betts. Mr. Betts had bigger ambitions.
It began with a book called “The Black Poets,” which someone slipped under his cell door during the year he spent in solitary confinement. “That’s the book that changed my life,” he has said of the anthology. “It introduced me to Etheridge Knight, to Rob Hayden, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez and so many countless black writers and black poets that really shaped who it is that I wanted to be in the world.”
After his release in 2005, he wrote two books of critically acclaimed poetry and a memoir. He got a B.A. and an M.F.A., and became a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard. Last May, he graduated from Yale Law School. Oh, and along the way, he became a husband and a father to two boys; tellingly, this is the first accomplishment he lists on his website’s biography page.
~~~~~~~~~~
Dwayne Betts is the kind of man who should be receiving awards from the bar association of Connecticut. Instead, he hasn’t been admitted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/opinion/admit-this-ex-con-to-the-connecticut-bar.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0
Why We Ignore Mass Suffering
An excerpt from Vox -
A psychologist explains the limits of human compassion
Why do we ignore mass atrocities? It has to do with something called “psychic numbing.”
Updated by Brian Resnick
I often report on political psychology. And in my conversations with scientists, I’ll often ask: “What research helps you understand what’s going on in the world?” The answer — whether it’s pegged to the refugee crisis abroad or the health care debate at home — very often involves Paul Slovic.
Slovic is a psychologist at the University of Oregon, and for decades he’s been asking the question: Why does the world often ignore mass atrocities, mass suffering?
Slovic’s work has shown that the human mind is not very good at thinking about, and empathizing with, millions or billions of individuals.
“THE VALUE OF A PERSON'S LIFE DECLINES PRECIPITOUSLY WITH NUMBER. IS THAT WHAT WE WANT?”
That’s why it’s not surprising six out of 10 Americans support a travel ban that, in part, bars refugees from entering America. That many lawmakers aren’t horrified by the possibility of booting tens of millions from health insurance. That the world looked on as millions died in war and genocide in Darfur. That we haven’t really grappled as a nation with the opioid epidemic, which killed 33,000 in 2015.
When numbers simply can’t convey the costs, there’s an infuriating paradox at play. Slovic calls it “psychic numbing.” As the number of victims in a tragedy increases, our empathy, our willingness to help, reliably decreases. This happens even when the number of victims increases from one to two.
https://www.vox.com/explainers/2017/7/19/15925506/psychic-numbing-paul-slovic-apathy
A psychologist explains the limits of human compassion
Why do we ignore mass atrocities? It has to do with something called “psychic numbing.”
Updated by Brian Resnick
I often report on political psychology. And in my conversations with scientists, I’ll often ask: “What research helps you understand what’s going on in the world?” The answer — whether it’s pegged to the refugee crisis abroad or the health care debate at home — very often involves Paul Slovic.
Slovic is a psychologist at the University of Oregon, and for decades he’s been asking the question: Why does the world often ignore mass atrocities, mass suffering?
Slovic’s work has shown that the human mind is not very good at thinking about, and empathizing with, millions or billions of individuals.
“THE VALUE OF A PERSON'S LIFE DECLINES PRECIPITOUSLY WITH NUMBER. IS THAT WHAT WE WANT?”
That’s why it’s not surprising six out of 10 Americans support a travel ban that, in part, bars refugees from entering America. That many lawmakers aren’t horrified by the possibility of booting tens of millions from health insurance. That the world looked on as millions died in war and genocide in Darfur. That we haven’t really grappled as a nation with the opioid epidemic, which killed 33,000 in 2015.
When numbers simply can’t convey the costs, there’s an infuriating paradox at play. Slovic calls it “psychic numbing.” As the number of victims in a tragedy increases, our empathy, our willingness to help, reliably decreases. This happens even when the number of victims increases from one to two.
https://www.vox.com/explainers/2017/7/19/15925506/psychic-numbing-paul-slovic-apathy
Second Chance Project — Andre Edding’s Story
http://www.upworthy.com/he-was-ready-to-return-to-a-life-of-crime-daves-killer-bread-offered-an-alternative?c=upw1
Thank an Immigrant
From Upworthy -
23 things non-English-speaking immigrants gave us that we totally don't need. Not at all.
by Eric March
http://www.upworthy.com/23-things-non-english-speaking-immigrants-gave-us-that-we-totally-dont-need-not-at-all?c=upw1
23 things non-English-speaking immigrants gave us that we totally don't need. Not at all.
by Eric March
http://www.upworthy.com/23-things-non-english-speaking-immigrants-gave-us-that-we-totally-dont-need-not-at-all?c=upw1
Gentrification
An excerpt from the New Republic -
How to Stop Gentrification
Individuals moving to newly-hip neighborhoods admit they are part of the problem. What can they do?
BY COLIN KINNIBURGH
In September 2005, the New Orleans real-estate developer Finis Shelnutt told a German newspaper of the opportunities Hurricane Katrina had created for his business. “The storm destroyed a great deal,” he said, just weeks after Katrina had killed more than one thousand people and expelled tens of thousands more from the city. “And there’s plenty of space to build houses and sell them for a lot of money.” Moreover, he added, “the hurricane drove poor people and criminals out of the city, and we hope they don’t come back.”
Shelnutt’s uniquely forthright comments distilled the essence of gentrification, as Peter Moskowitz explains it in How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood. Gentrification, in this account, is not just about twenty-something white dudes with beards riding their fixed-gear bikes into unfamiliar neighborhoods, nor filament-bulb-lit craft beer bars opening up alongside bodegas. It is not really a cultural phenomenon, as it is so often depicted, nor one driven by individuals with a little more disposable income than their new neighbors. It is about profit and power, racism and violence on a massive scale. It is, in Moskowitz’s words, “the urban form of a new kind of capitalism.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/144260/stop-gentrification
How to Stop Gentrification
Individuals moving to newly-hip neighborhoods admit they are part of the problem. What can they do?
BY COLIN KINNIBURGH
In September 2005, the New Orleans real-estate developer Finis Shelnutt told a German newspaper of the opportunities Hurricane Katrina had created for his business. “The storm destroyed a great deal,” he said, just weeks after Katrina had killed more than one thousand people and expelled tens of thousands more from the city. “And there’s plenty of space to build houses and sell them for a lot of money.” Moreover, he added, “the hurricane drove poor people and criminals out of the city, and we hope they don’t come back.”
Shelnutt’s uniquely forthright comments distilled the essence of gentrification, as Peter Moskowitz explains it in How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood. Gentrification, in this account, is not just about twenty-something white dudes with beards riding their fixed-gear bikes into unfamiliar neighborhoods, nor filament-bulb-lit craft beer bars opening up alongside bodegas. It is not really a cultural phenomenon, as it is so often depicted, nor one driven by individuals with a little more disposable income than their new neighbors. It is about profit and power, racism and violence on a massive scale. It is, in Moskowitz’s words, “the urban form of a new kind of capitalism.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/144260/stop-gentrification
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