LAGC
LAGC's JournalBill Moyers: Can a Left-Right Coalition Bring About Real Prison Reform?
There’s not much that Tea Party Republicans and liberal Democrats agree on these days. Surprisingly, one of them happens to be scaling back mass incarceration, the subject of a live-streamed meeting today of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The motives vary among and between key legislative leaders as ideologically disparate as Republican Sens. Mike Lee (UT) and Rand Paul (KY) and Democrats Patrick Leahy (VT) and Dick Durbin (IL). But whether motivated by concern for civil liberties, unsustainable state and federal budgets or a New Testament-inclination for giving second chances, one fact trumps all differences: The US houses by far the largest incarcerated population in the world at 2.2 million people as of year-end 2011. That smudge, as well as unsubtle championing of sentencing reform by attorney general Eric Holder, has galvanized a relatively quiet bipartisan effort over the past five years. Advocates say Congress is taking on mass incarceration one reform at a time. The latest are tucked into the 1,582-page FY2014 omnibus spending bill, and other reforms are coming down the pike. Below, a guide to these new developments.
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http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/31/can-a-left-right-coalition-bring-about-real-prison-reform/
It's not just the Tea Party either, even some "Establishment" neo-cons like Newt Gingrich have been making some gestures lately indicating that America's out-of-control prison growth needs to be reigned in.
(Of course, their motivation is probably freeing up more money from wasteful domestic spending to wage some more wars abroad... but finding some common ground over prison reform would be nice.)
Kalashnikov 'feared he was to blame' for AK-47 rifle deaths
Mikhail Kalashnikov, who died last month aged 94, wrote a long emotional letter to Patriarch Kirill in May 2012, church officials say.
He said he was suffering "spiritual pain" over the many deaths it caused.
Kalashnikov had previously refused to accept responsibility for those killed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25709371
Interesting article... the AK-47 (and its variants) definitely changed the landscape of modern warfare.
Curious that the proliferation of his 65-year-old invention caused him such mental anguish in his final days...
But how much can the inventor truly be blamed? If not the Kalashnikov, surely some other automatic rifle would have filled the void... maybe not as simple and elegant of a design, maybe not as rugged and inexpensive, but equally efficient killing machines none-the-less.
Doesn't it all still boil down to human nature and malicious intent? Or is the tool truly to blame in this case?
It is thought that more than 100 million Kalashnikov rifles have been sold worldwide.
It definitely had an impact, that's for sure...
Grandmother says her heart goes out to his family, she never intended to kill the young man.
"And that's when I fired my gun and hit him with the first round," said the victim of a home invasion in the 3000 block of Morningside Drive in Shreveport.
She says when she realized she only had coins in the safe she began fearing for her own life , the life of her granddaughter, and great grandson.
The terrified 63 year-old grandmother and great grandmother doesn't want to be identified. She tells KSLA News 12 she got the drop on the alleged robber when she distracted him by handing him the bag of money with one hand. With the other hand, she says she shot the sixteen year- old in the chest.
http://www.ksla.com/story/24378134/grandmother-who-shot-alleged-robber-speaks-out
"55 dollars in coins, and he lost his life."
SMH.
State Cop Shoots at Minivan Full of Kids
Now the driver and her son are facing charges while New Mexico State Police are investigating the officers involved.
It all started Oct. 28 on a state highway south of Taos. A State Police officer pulled over Oriana Ferrell's minivan for going 71 mphr in a 55 mph zone. In the minivan with her were her five kids. The Taos News reports the children range in age from 6 to 18.
On dash cam video released to KRQE News 13 Friday you can see Ferrell and the officer argue after Ferrell couldn't decide whether to pay the $126 fine or contest it in court. The officer instructs her to turn her vehicle off and stay put before walking back to his car.
http://www.krqe.com/news/crime/state-cop-shoots-at-minivan-full-of-kids
She shouldn't have drove off, but that doesn't justify the violent police response -- one of the kids in there could have easily been killed.
Cops needs to chill the fuck out instead of play Rambo all the time.
"Measured response" is the order of the day.
That is all.
I Will Say One Thing About the Catholic Church...
They sure have harbored some incredible minds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_scientists
For an institution so steeped in tradition, superstition, and folklore, they sure did evolve (even before the Renaissance) to lay the very foundation for modern science itself.
We're covering Gregor Mendel right now in Biology, his insightful contributions to the study of genetics.
I can't help but to think, if it wasn't for the Church back in the day with all their monasteries allowing such "philosopher monks" to be able to focus all their free time on on matters of the mind instead of endless busy-body work, we would have never gotten out of the Dark Ages.
I'm not so sure that the Church is really all that necessary any more, in this era of free-flowing information and esteemed secular institutes of higher learning, but I will give them props for the role they played back in the day, laying down the building blocks of the explosion of human knowledge and scientific discovery over the past 500 years, especially over the past 200 years alone.
It gives me great hope for the future of humanity, that even from the most guarded halls of dogma and ritual that such forward-thinking perspectives could arise, and even thrive.
Maybe even Islam will eventually come around and change its ways. Come back to contributing to the greater human knowledge like it did in its early days, instead of trying to drag us back down to pre-civilized levels of endless sectarian violence and hate.
We can hope, right?
Today We Learned How to Make Crack Cocaine and Kevlar!
So today we learned about amines and amides, in Organic Chemistry. (For those not familiar, it involves organic compounds with a Nitrogen component.)
This is cocaine:
Chemistry professors sure seem to know a lot about illegal substances... crack is a lower purity form of free-base cocaine that is usually produced by neutralization of cocaine hydrochloride with a solution of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3) and water, producing a very hard/brittle, off-white-to-brown colored, amorphous material that contains sodium carbonate, entrapped water, and other by-products as the main impurities.
Someone in class asked why it is that rich people tend to be the ones who do the pure cocaine, whereas poor folks tend to be the ones who do crack. She wasn't sure, but said she'd get back to us.
But what was really cool is we learned what kevlar and many fire-proof and bullet-proof vests are made of:
Those red balls are oxygen atoms, the blue balls nitrogen, white balls hydrogen, and black carbon.
It's amazing that just these 4 simple elements, when arranged a certain way, produce properties that make them so impervious to penetration.
This class has been nothing short of fascinating, it really is amazing how chemistry ties in to so many aspects of our lives. It really is the central science.
If I wasn't so dead-set on becoming a biologist, I'd definitely pursue chemistry instead.
The things we've learned in just the past 200 years since chemistry was founded as a science really have changed everything.
Everything boils down to chemistry. Everything.
As Germans Push Austerity, Greeks Press Nazi-Era Claims
Mr. Syngelakis, who was 7 then, still wants payback. And in pursuing a demand for reparations from Germany, he reflects a growing movement here, fueled not just by historical grievances but also by deep resentment among his countrymen over Germany’s current power to dictate budget austerity to the fiscally crippled Greek government.
Germany may be Greece’s stern banker now, say those who are seeking reparations, but before it goes too far down that road, it should pay off its own debts to Greece.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/world/europe/as-germans-push-austerity-greeks-press-back.html?_r=0
It will be interesting to see if Greece presses the issue.
For as much as Greece has bent over backwards to meet German demands, there really should be forgiveness of a good part of that bailout debt that is crippling Greece right now...
Matthew 6:6
I'm sure God is quite impressed with such grandiose displays of public piety...
Of course, its not Him they are trying to impress, is it?
"Emergent Properties" in Biology
So I finally decided to go back to finish up college earlier this year after a long 15-year hiatus. Before, my original major was sociology, but I was only going part-time while working full-time in the tech industry back when the economy was booming under Clinton, so my head wasn't really in the game.
Anyway, I decided to pursue my dreams and major in biology this time around, mainly because life science was my favorite subject back in junior high school, and genetics in particular really fascinated me. So here I am taking my first intro-level (albeit sophomore-level) biology course, and I already keep finding myself just absolutely stunned and shocked by what I'm reading in my textbook.
How you have all these mindless molecules self-reproducing, molecules spawning other molecules, all completely void of any sort of will or agency at all, just doing their own thing without any care in the world. Just a handful of simple chemical elements, that once joined together cause incredibly complex things to happen. I just find it so fucking incredible and awe-inspiring.
I mean, don't get me wrong -- I'm not even buying into the notion that any of our current religious traditions are anywhere near close to knowing the truth of how it all began -- but it is hard not to imagine that we are part of some sort of massive simulation, like we're living in the Matrix or something. LOL. All these hidden "rules" dictating how life behaves at each level of the biological hierarchy, as simpler parts combine to make much more complex things happen. It's just mind-boggling.
Do you guys ever wax philosophical about it all? I know philosophy tends to be only so much mental masturbation often times, but it is fun to think about "the deeper issues" some days... ponder the "how" of it all, let alone the "why" of it all, even if it does seem like an exercise in futility most of the time.
Isn't life fascinating? Just the sheer absurdity of it all? Something rather than nothing? Consciousness out of reducible parts?
Quick! Where's my fainting couch! 
Conservapedia: "Moral Zeitgeist"
Don't ask me how I stumbled upon this.
But offered for your reading pleasure if you need a chuckle to lift up your day...
http://www.conservapedia.com/Moral_Zeitgeist
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