“Biology all makes sense if you live long enough.”
By Anna Daniels
Bill Moyers has long been a champion of poetry. Last year he ran a memorable poetry series on Moyers and Company. It was so memorable that a number of readers sent me the link as a source for poems this month. Kyle Dargan is a young professor of writing and literature at American University. He has three award winning books of poetry under his belt and he has a beautiful reading voice. [Read more…]
By Frank Thomas / Edited by John Lawrence
The slower rate of rise in global surface mean temperature since 1998 has been the last straw for Britain’s respected, eccentric, environmental scientist, James Lovelock. He now has made a complete reversal from being a ‘radical alarmist’ on climate change to being a ‘radical non-alarmist’.
In 2008, Lovelock said climate warming had already become irreversible, “Catastrophe is unstoppable and everything we are trying to do about it is wrong.We won’t invent the necessary technologies in time and ‘80%’ of the world’s population would be wiped out by 2100. People have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, but this is the real thing. Enjoy life while you can because if you are lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.”
[Read more…]
What David Foster got wrong in his commentary in The Guardian about sexual freedom.
By Alyssa Figueroa / Alternet
“Hey, baby, wanna ride?” a man said to me, just yesterday, as he hung his body outside of a passenger window while I waited to cross the street. My eyes darted left as the car passed right, and I then crossed the street when the coast was clear. By the time I got to the next block, the embarrassment I felt had worn off, and I didn’t tell anyone about my experience because it’s so common that, in some ways, even I have come to normalize the demeaning occurrence. And even though the feeling of humiliation, degradation, powerlessness and sometimes fear still emerges with every catcall, who is going to care if I talk about such a typical experience in women’s lives?
That’s what the Everyday Sexism Project is for — though its intentions were clearly confused by David Foster in his recent piece in The Guardian. The Project is a space where women could stop remaining silent about sexism. [Read more…]
Americans in 14 states have spent $1 billion on voucher programs that fund anti-science education.
Alex Kane / Alternet
American tax dollars are funding the teaching of creationism in schools. An in-depth report by Politico’s Stephanie Simon reveals that taxpayers in 14 states are spending $1 billion to fund tuition for private schools, including hundreds of institutions that teach that God created the Earth and that biology and geology are full of lies.
While taxpayers don’t directly fund private schools, they do fund voucher programs that allow parents to spend public money on private schools that have virulently anti-science curricula. Voucher programs have long been a favored cause for the Christian right. And the Christian right is now having an impact on what kids are learning. [Read more…]
By Doug Porter
Another week has passed and UT-San Diego has published yet another article telling us what to expect in the coming months as our local plutocrats hammer out plans for a new gladiator arena, er, football stadium.
Past failures to achieve a consensus were brushed aside by Chargers special counsel Mark Fabian in this weeks fish wrap, attributed to “the kind of political instability that is more typical of a banana republic than of a major American city”. I’m sure former Mayor Jerry Sanders (2005-2012) is thrilled by that characterization.
This week we learn of a Joint Powers Authority (Think SANDAG, or the Airport Commission), with a “working scernario” envisioning a county-wide 2016 ballot measure tapping local treasuries for the expected “taxpayer contribution common in the construction costs of every new National Football League stadium in recent years.” [Read more…]
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” –Louis Brandeis
By Jim Miller
In the wake of the McCutcheon decision, there was a brief flurry of outrage about the growing power of moneyed interests in our politics, but it predictably ebbed. One might reasonably argue that this is because the American public has become immune to such bad news.
Indeed, a cursory survey of the media over the last couple of weeks alone is enough to give any concerned citizen a depressing snapshot of where we are now with regard to wealth versus commonwealth.
The New York Times reports that “Corporate Profits Grow and Wages Slide” noting that, “Corporate profits are at their highest level in at least 85 years. Employee compensation is at the lowest level in 65 years.” [Read more…]
By Anna Daniels
Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda is well known for his love poems which have been translated by such luminaries as WS Merwin and Robert Bly, both poets in their own right. Matilde Urrutia, who is the subject of a number of those poems, has been described as his muse of love. Neruda hearkened often to the muse’s call.
Less well known are his keen observations of nature that reflect an inquisitive and informed intellect. His poems about birds in Arte de Pájaros/Art of Birds as well as those about the sea and sea life are as sensual in their language as the love poems. [Read more…]
Miriam Pawel offers the most comprehensive look at Chavez and his movement in her new book, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez.
By Mark R. Day / Labor Notes
“Cesar was not a humble man,” narrator Luis Valdez says at the conclusion of the new documentary “Cesar’s Last Fast,” about the late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez. “Nor was he a simple man.”
Indeed, Chavez was a controversial and complex figure. That’s the problem with Diego Luna’s feature film “Cesar Chavez,” whose release coincided with the charismatic leader’s March 31 birthday.
Chavez was, of course, a genius and a master organizer. His successes in the vineyards and lettuce fields of California came about as a result of enormous personal sacrifice and his ability to reach out to a wide audience: students, priests, nuns, ministers, labor leaders, and average housewives who made up their minds not to buy grapes.
He broke the back of the open shop in the fields and is credited as a founder of the Chicano movement. Just a decade after he began organizing grape pickers in Delano, California, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine. [Read more…]
By Daniel Gutiérrez
La Jolla, California — On Tuesday, April 15th, UAW Local 2865, representing graduate student-workers across the University of California system, reached a tentative agreement with UC management regarding the procurement of all-gendered bathrooms and lactation stations. UC management succumbed to the necessities demanded by UAW Local 2865, acknowledging that both all-gendered bathrooms and lactation stations are a labor right to graduate student-workers. The historic achievement was reached after the union went on strike for two days early this month, in which nearly two dozen students were arrested and many others intimidated. [Read more…]
By Bob Dorn
I’m from the stone age. I don’t carry a smart phone because I’m not smart enough. I think an app has something to do with Apple, like maybe it’s an abbreviation. It took me a number of years before I found out that Silicon Valley wasn’t a reference to that place between two huge phony boobs, where the pearl necklace settles.
My feeling about technology – just a feeling, now, or an opinion, if you prefer – is that it might be self cancelling, like a chia pet, or, say, network television, where on air people laugh at stuff that isn’t funny (and for a while longer might get paid for it). For all but fanatics, cars are done, too. … [Read more…]
By Ernie McCray
Don’t want to spoil your party
Don’t want to bust your balloon
But look up above your head
There’s some ozone gone
ozone gone
ozone gone
Can we get it back
And you’ll see that the sky
Is no longer blue [Read more…]
By Staff
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recorder aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.
This is the unforgettable opening line of Gabriel García Márquez literary masterpiece Cien años de soledad— One Hundred Years of Solitude. [Read more…]
