May 7, 2017

Maybe the dem leaders should stop making it so easy.

Supporting GATT, NAFTA and the TPP isn't a very good way to show that you care about working people.

Trump exploited this every chance he could, and it worked.

Note to jury: the soul of the Democratic party is being destroyed by the amorality of free trade, if this earns me a hide so be it.

April 15, 2017

except in the case of Iran

United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 "calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology."

So no, Iran is not free to do as it pleases.

http://www.un.org/en/sc/2231/restrictions-ballistic.shtml

April 15, 2017

The juju king

April 14, 2017

12 Old Words That Survived by Getting Fossilized in Idioms

English has changed a lot in the last several hundred years, and there are many words once used that we would no longer recognize today. For whatever reason, we started pronouncing them differently, or stopped using them entirely, and they became obsolete. There are some old words, however, that are nearly obsolete, but we still recognize because they were lucky enough to get stuck in set phrases that have lasted across the centuries. Here are 12 lucky words that survived by getting fossilized in idioms.

1. wend

You rarely see a "wend" without a "way." You can wend your way through a crowd or down a hill, but no one wends to bed or to school. However, there was a time when English speakers would wend to all kinds of places. "Wend" was just another word for "go" in Old English. The past tense of "wend" was "went" and the past tense of "go" was "gaed." People used both until the 15th century, when "go" became the preferred verb, except in the past tense where "went" hung on, leaving us with an outrageously irregular verb.

2. deserts

The "desert" from the phrase "just deserts" is not the dry and sandy kind, nor the sweet post-dinner kind. It comes from an Old French word for "deserve," and it was used in English from the 13th century to mean "that which is deserved." When you get your just deserts, you get your due. In some cases, that may mean you also get dessert, a word that comes from a later French borrowing.

3. eke

If we see "eke" at all these days, it's when we "eke out" a living, but it comes from an old verb meaning to add, supplement, or grow. It's the same word that gave us "eke-name" for "additional name," which later, through misanalysis of "an eke-name" became "nickname."

4. sleight

"Sleight of hand" is one tricky phrase. "Sleight" is often miswritten as "slight" and for good reason. Not only does the expression convey an image of light, nimble fingers, which fits well with the smallness implied by "slight," but an alternate expression for the concept is "legerdemain," from the French léger de main," literally, "light of hand." "Sleight" comes from a different source, a Middle English word meaning "cunning" or "trickery." It's a wily little word that lives up to its name.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/51150/12-old-words-survived-getting-fossilized-idioms

April 14, 2017

Lost Weather Balloon GoPro Found Two Years Later with Astounding Shots of Earth from Space

This is from a couple years ago:

Back in June 2013, five friends in Arizona decided to capture some footage of space by sending a GoPro, camcorder, and phone up in a weather balloon. The team–consisting of college students Bryan Chan, Ved Chirayath, Ashish Goel, Paul Tarantino, and Tyler Reid–built their device, calculated its trajectory, registered with the FAA to avoid interfering with passing aircrafts, and finally launched the balloon in the desert a few miles outside of Tuba City. The friends planned to track the balloon's progress using GPS on the attached smartphone, but they soon lost contact with the locator after the device floated out of cell phone tower range.

For months, the group wondered if they would ever get their balloon and cameras back. In reality, it would take two whole years for them to see the results of their project again. This summer, they received a call from an unknown number–a hiker in Arizona had found a strange box with their names on it 50 miles away from their original launch point. Reunited with their equipment, the team could finally see the extraordinary video and photos that the cameras had taken–including a gorgeous “money shot” of the Grand Canyon captured from the stratosphere (above). The group of friends also had a chance to parse the data from their device, and they learned that the balloon had reached an altitude of 98,664 feet, with a total flight time of 1 hour and 38 minutes.




http://mymodernmet.com/lost-weather-balloon-captures-grand-canyon-shot/

April 6, 2017

Hamas hangs 3 accused of collaborating with Israel in killing of commander

Hamas hanged three men in Gaza accused of “collaborating” with Israel.

The death sentence was carried out Thursday by the terror organization that controls the coastal strip.

The men were accused of being involved in giving information to Israeli military intelligence to aid in the assassination of a top Hamas commander, Mazen Fuqaha, late last month in Gaza, which Hamas blames on Israel. Israel has neither affirmed nor denied involvement in the killing.

The men, aged 32, 42 and 55, were charged with providing information on the location of Hamas operatives and military sites over the past three decades. Hamas said they were allowed to defend themselves as provided under Sharia law.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the executions and said they were illegal because Hamas did not get the permission to execute from P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas.

http://www.jta.org/2017/04/06/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/hamas-hangs-3-accused-of-collaborating-with-israel-in-killing-of-commander

March 19, 2017

In an Angry and Fearful Nation, an Outbreak of Anti-Semitism

-snip-

Working with a coalition of organizations, ProPublica late last year launched “Documenting Hate,” an attempt to gather evidence of hate crimes and episodes of bigotry from a divided America. The account from Cincinnati is one of the anti-Semitic incidents the project has chronicled. But there are scores more.

Indeed, “Documenting Hate” recorded more than 330 reports of anti-Semitic incidents during a three-month span from early November to early February. The accounts — our list is by no means comprehensive — come via personal submissions, police documents and news articles. The majority, though not all, have been authenticated through either news reports, interviews or other evidence, like photos.

The incidents have taken place in big cities and small towns, along the country’s liberal coasts and in deep red states. Some of the episodes — swastikas and threatening messages spray-painted at schools and colleges around the nation — have been worrisome, though relatively minor. Others have been more serious, such as the 65 bomb threats targeting Jewish organizations across the country during the period we examined (there have been nearly 70 more since then). In many cases, the culprits singled out specific individuals for abuse, defacing their homes and autos with swastikas and menacing comments.

-snip-

On a national level, data on hate crimes and bias incidents is spotty at best. The FBI admits the information it collects is incomplete — many police departments don’t participate in the hate crimes tracking program — and the bureau has yet to release statistics on 2016 and 2017. As a result, determining with authority whether anti-Semitic events are rising or declining is difficult.

There is little question, however, that the incidents have generated genuine concern. In a rare show of unity, all 100 U.S. senators this week issued a public letter urging the Department of Justice, FBI and Department of Homeland Security to protect Jewish institutions and prosecute those responsible for terrorizing them. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced a $25 million grant to better protect day care and community centers from threats.

The available data does support the idea of an uptick. After years of decline, anti-Semitic crimes began trending upward in 2015, according to FBI data. Experts say that increase seems to have accelerated in recent months, as Trump’s unique brand of nativist populism has helped to pull more extreme right-wing groups, some of them avowedly racist, closer to the political mainstream. On Twitter, openly anti-Semitic figures have built vast networks of supporters and cultivated large audiences, while the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website geared towards millennials, has seen its traffic grow to roughly a half a million unique visitors per month. In New York City, the police department said anti-Semitic hate crimes nearly doubled in the first two months of 2017 as compared to the same period last year.

-snip-

https://www.propublica.org/article/in-an-angry-and-fearful-nation-an-outbreak-of-anti-semitism

March 16, 2017

A baseball team like no other

They call it Team Israel, but really, it’s Team Jew. And there’s never been anything like it.

Next month in South Korea, 16 countries will play in the quadrennial baseball tournament known as the World Baseball Classic (WBC), a “World Cup” for baseball. One of them is Israel, which advanced to the tournament by winning its qualifier in Brooklyn in September.

Almost all the players on this team are Jewish Americans, representing a mix of the American-Jewish community. Some have an integrated Jewish background – two Jewish parents, extensive participation in Jewish holidays, and involvement in the Jewish community – while others have a Jewish parent but grew up with the other parent after divorce, or have only one Jewish grandparent, and barely know they are Jewish. Yet somehow, they all bought in on being a Jew representing Israel.

“I always found it amazing that so many of these guys who had virtually no [Jewish] identity growing up, never celebrated Jewish holidays, embraced being known as a Jewish baseball player,” says Jonathan Mayo, 46, a reporter for MLB.com since 1999; “and understanding that the Jewish community in the United States loves them unconditionally.”

The guys not only embraced their identity as Jewish players, they embraced each other. The weekend before the Brooklyn qualifier, the team gathered for the first time in Wappingers Falls, New York. It was a threeday mini-camp to get them ready to play Great Britain and Brazil. Repeatedly, veterans spoke of their amazement at the team comradery that so quickly came together.

“I don’t know what the reason was behind it, but everybody got super comfortable with everybody on the first day of the workouts,” says Nick Rickles, 27, a catcher with the Washington Nationals organization. “The next day, it was like we’d played together six months – everybody was on the same page immediately. That was very impressive to me. I can feel something special that I don’t know that I felt with a team before, especially this soon.”

Rickles is one of a handful of returning veterans who played in the WBC in 2012, the first qualifying round in which Israel competed. “It’s been four years since we’ve seen each other, but coming back, we hadn’t missed a beat in four years,” he says. “That was also very impressive to me.”

Nate Freiman, 30, a free agent first baseman, is another of the five or six players who will be playing on the third Team Israel roster next month ‒ 2012 and September being the first two. He was the star at the first qualifier in Jupiter, Florida, when he hit four home runs, knocked in seven and slugged 1.417.

http://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/A-baseball-team-like-no-other-480827

I'm going to leave this up but I meant to post this in the Jewish group.

March 11, 2017

Interview: Photographer Reveals What Dinnertime Looks Like Across the U.S.

What is your dinner routine like? Whether you sit down to the table at 6:30PM on the dot, or eat in front of your TV at 8PM, you probably have some sort of custom. Photographer Lois Bielefeld is fascinated by this particular ritual; it transcends our differences in age, race, and culture, reminding us of our shared humanity. In her series Weeknight Dinners, she captures a “typical evening” meal for individuals and families in the United States.

Bielefeld was strategic about that the times that she snapped these pictures. “I photographed the portraits Monday through Thursday evenings,” she writes, “when time constraints due to work, parenting, and family activities often dictate dinner rituals.” This gives people less of an opportunity to cook a fancy meal on her behalf, and the results are revealing. Although some people eat at a table, just as many eat on their couch or the floor. They also dine together, yet separated—one person will sit in a single chair while someone else will be across the room on a couch.

Each image is a thought-provoking look into that individual (or family), and it makes you wonder what life is like beyond dinner time. These photographs are normally shown as large prints in gallery/museum type spaces, allowing us to observe and take in all of the rich details.

Bielefeld is represented by the Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We had the opportunity to ask her about Weeknight Dinners. Scroll down to read our exclusive interview.

http://mymodernmet.com/lois-bielefeld-weeknight-dinners/

March 9, 2017

Start of a new Career?

Comedian Dave Chappelle addresses Village of Yellow Springs council meeting