Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Monday, October 30, 2017
Controlling Black Athletes
An excerpt from the Washington Post -
Bob McNair, other NFL owners demonstrate their true intent: Controlling black athletes
By Kevin B. Blackistone
Control of black athletic talent in this country was then, before and now — as Houston Texans owner Bob McNair reminded not once but twice over the past few days — of paramount concern to ownership and management. There was, for example, the concerted effort of white lawmakers to wrest the heavyweight championship of the world over a century ago from boxer Jack Johnson, the first black man to hold it, to restore the fallacy of white superiority. There was reduction of college athletic scholarships from four-year contracts to single-year agreements at the start of the 1970s, which just so happened to coincide with teams ramping up through integration, reducing the power of new stars, primarily of color, from managing their destinies. There was the NBA under commissioner David Stern in 2005 managing to impose a dress code on the predominantly black league to rebut an increasingly urban image that Stern was worried might have made it less marketable to advertisers and white fans.
And there is the NFL’s response to free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick and those players who have dared use the national anthem as a stage to protest grievances against police lethality vs. black men or the dog-whistle (if not foghorn) firebrand of this country’s latest president.
What the upper echelon of the NFL began reacting to earlier this year, with its conspiratorial defrocking of Kaepernick, wasn’t about the anthem, per se. It wasn’t about the massive flags it so often unfurls before games. It wasn’t about the military it recognizes at almost every game with a presentation of the colors or an expensive flyover of armed forces weaponry.
It was about, as McNair allowed his subconscious to let slip, corralling the players and returning them to their place.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/nfl-bob-mcnair-demonstrate-their-true-intent-controlling-black-athletes/2017/10/29/437685d4-bcd2-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.d247ebd2aeb9
Bob McNair, other NFL owners demonstrate their true intent: Controlling black athletes
By Kevin B. Blackistone
Control of black athletic talent in this country was then, before and now — as Houston Texans owner Bob McNair reminded not once but twice over the past few days — of paramount concern to ownership and management. There was, for example, the concerted effort of white lawmakers to wrest the heavyweight championship of the world over a century ago from boxer Jack Johnson, the first black man to hold it, to restore the fallacy of white superiority. There was reduction of college athletic scholarships from four-year contracts to single-year agreements at the start of the 1970s, which just so happened to coincide with teams ramping up through integration, reducing the power of new stars, primarily of color, from managing their destinies. There was the NBA under commissioner David Stern in 2005 managing to impose a dress code on the predominantly black league to rebut an increasingly urban image that Stern was worried might have made it less marketable to advertisers and white fans.
And there is the NFL’s response to free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick and those players who have dared use the national anthem as a stage to protest grievances against police lethality vs. black men or the dog-whistle (if not foghorn) firebrand of this country’s latest president.
What the upper echelon of the NFL began reacting to earlier this year, with its conspiratorial defrocking of Kaepernick, wasn’t about the anthem, per se. It wasn’t about the massive flags it so often unfurls before games. It wasn’t about the military it recognizes at almost every game with a presentation of the colors or an expensive flyover of armed forces weaponry.
It was about, as McNair allowed his subconscious to let slip, corralling the players and returning them to their place.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/nfl-bob-mcnair-demonstrate-their-true-intent-controlling-black-athletes/2017/10/29/437685d4-bcd2-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.d247ebd2aeb9
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Lessons From a Toni Morrison Short Story
From the New Yorker -
The Work You Do, the Person You Are
The pleasure of being necessary to my parents was profound. I was not like the children in folktales: burdensome mouths to feed.
By Toni Morrison
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/05/the-work-you-do-the-person-you-are
The Work You Do, the Person You Are
The pleasure of being necessary to my parents was profound. I was not like the children in folktales: burdensome mouths to feed.
By Toni Morrison
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/05/the-work-you-do-the-person-you-are
Pretty Proud
Years ago, 36 to be exact, I started a needlepoint project when I was pregnant with my oldest son, Ben. I completed about half of it before he was born, but was way too busy to deal with it after his birth, so I put it in a box and forgot about it.
When I moved recently, I discovered this long-lost project and decided to finish it. I was so proud of the end result, I had it framed and it's now hanging prominently in my new home. Here it is below.
A little background.
My degree is in pharmacy and I was working as a pharmacist when I started this.
You don't have to look too hard to see that it's not perfect, but that's OK. It's finished. It's done. It's complete.
And for that, I'm most proud.
When I moved recently, I discovered this long-lost project and decided to finish it. I was so proud of the end result, I had it framed and it's now hanging prominently in my new home. Here it is below.
A little background.
My degree is in pharmacy and I was working as a pharmacist when I started this.
You don't have to look too hard to see that it's not perfect, but that's OK. It's finished. It's done. It's complete.
And for that, I'm most proud.
Tombstones
From Stumbleupon -
50+ Brilliant Tombstones By People Whose Sense Of Humor Will Live Forever
By Šarūnė Mac
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/55Ff0Y/:12T1w86Dl:ns$+w71./www.boredpanda.com/funny-tombstones-epitaphs
50+ Brilliant Tombstones By People Whose Sense Of Humor Will Live Forever
By Šarūnė Mac
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/55Ff0Y/:12T1w86Dl:ns$+w71./www.boredpanda.com/funny-tombstones-epitaphs
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Quote
“The Democratic party is too male,” said Letitia James, public advocate for the City of New York and the first woman of color to hold citywide office in the city. “It’s too pale and too stale.”
(Bold is mine)
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/at-the-womens-convention-a-clear-message-follow-black-women-in-2018_us_59f4939ce4b03cd20b81e45f?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
(Bold is mine)
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/at-the-womens-convention-a-clear-message-follow-black-women-in-2018_us_59f4939ce4b03cd20b81e45f?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
Solve Tough Data Problems. Get Flooded With Job Offers.
An excerpt from Wired -
SOLVE THESE TOUGH DATA PROBLEMS AND WATCH JOB OFFERS ROLL IN
By Tom Simonite
LATE IN 2015, Gilberto Titericz, an electrical engineer at Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras, told his boss he planned to resign, after seven years maintaining sensors and other hardware in oil plants. By devoting hundreds of hours of leisure time to the obscure world of competitive data analysis, Titericz had recently become the world’s top-ranked data scientist, by one reckoning. Silicon Valley was calling. “Only when I wanted to quit did they realize they had the number-one data scientist,” he says.
Petrobras held on to its champ for a time by moving Titericz into a position that used his data skills. But since topping the rankings that October he’d received a stream of emails from recruiters around the globe, including representatives of Tesla and Google. This past February, another well-known tech company hired him, and moved his family to the Bay Area this summer. Titericz described his unlikely journey recently over colorful plates of Nigerian food at the headquarters of his new employer, Airbnb.
Titericz earned, and holds, his number-one rank on a website called Kaggle that has turned data analysis into a kind of sport, and transformed the lives of some competitors. Companies, government agencies, and researchers post datasets on the platform and invite Kaggle’s more than one million members to discern patterns and solve problems. Winners get glory, points toward Kaggle’s rankings of its top 66,000 data scientists, and sometimes cash prizes.
https://www.wired.com/story/solve-these-tough-data-problems-and-watch-job-offers-roll-in/?mbid=nl_102817_daily_list1_p1
SOLVE THESE TOUGH DATA PROBLEMS AND WATCH JOB OFFERS ROLL IN
By Tom Simonite
LATE IN 2015, Gilberto Titericz, an electrical engineer at Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras, told his boss he planned to resign, after seven years maintaining sensors and other hardware in oil plants. By devoting hundreds of hours of leisure time to the obscure world of competitive data analysis, Titericz had recently become the world’s top-ranked data scientist, by one reckoning. Silicon Valley was calling. “Only when I wanted to quit did they realize they had the number-one data scientist,” he says.
Petrobras held on to its champ for a time by moving Titericz into a position that used his data skills. But since topping the rankings that October he’d received a stream of emails from recruiters around the globe, including representatives of Tesla and Google. This past February, another well-known tech company hired him, and moved his family to the Bay Area this summer. Titericz described his unlikely journey recently over colorful plates of Nigerian food at the headquarters of his new employer, Airbnb.
Titericz earned, and holds, his number-one rank on a website called Kaggle that has turned data analysis into a kind of sport, and transformed the lives of some competitors. Companies, government agencies, and researchers post datasets on the platform and invite Kaggle’s more than one million members to discern patterns and solve problems. Winners get glory, points toward Kaggle’s rankings of its top 66,000 data scientists, and sometimes cash prizes.
https://www.wired.com/story/solve-these-tough-data-problems-and-watch-job-offers-roll-in/?mbid=nl_102817_daily_list1_p1
Adding Insult to Injury
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/columnist/bell/2017/10/27/nfl-owners-texans-bob-mcnair-need-sensitivity-training-race/807958001/
Autism Breakthrough?
An excerpt from the Sacramento Bee -
UC Davis researchers test drug that may reverse symptoms of autism
By Molly Sullivan
Researchers at UC Davis MIND Institute may have found a drug that can reverse symptoms of a rare genetic condition associated with autism.
The 16p11.2 deletion syndrome – caused by the deletion of a small piece of chromosome 16 – is present in one-third of people with autism. People who have this condition are missing certain genes, resulting in impaired communication and social skills and delayed intellectual development, said Jacqueline Crawley, the lead researcher in the study.
The drug that may help is called R-baclofen. It interacts with a specific kind of neurotransmitter to inhibit neurons from firing, she said.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article181379671.html#emlnl=Breaking_Newsletter#storylink=cpy
UC Davis researchers test drug that may reverse symptoms of autism
By Molly Sullivan
Researchers at UC Davis MIND Institute may have found a drug that can reverse symptoms of a rare genetic condition associated with autism.
The 16p11.2 deletion syndrome – caused by the deletion of a small piece of chromosome 16 – is present in one-third of people with autism. People who have this condition are missing certain genes, resulting in impaired communication and social skills and delayed intellectual development, said Jacqueline Crawley, the lead researcher in the study.
The drug that may help is called R-baclofen. It interacts with a specific kind of neurotransmitter to inhibit neurons from firing, she said.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article181379671.html#emlnl=Breaking_Newsletter#storylink=cpy
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)