Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Either...Or...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 26, 2019 at 5:00am

The Mueller Report (CNN.com - read it while you can)

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Climate Change, Existentialism, Human Rights, LGBT Rights, Women's Rights

I'll be taking a break for finals, writing my thesis and the birth of our granddaughter. Her entrance to this plane is pending.

For her, it's all hands on deck.

The future belongs to the young, soon born and yet-to-be born. The future is diverse and more tolerant than the Neanderthal mythologized past we're being dragged to. The present is hopefully planning for a future that will be 8.6 billion in 2030 and 9.8 billion in 2050, and the strains on resources that will bring. The present is hopefully planning for a future with a warmer climate, and our strategy towards ameliorating it. The future is being written, with every tweet and malfeasance of a man epitomizing more demon than Christian; more boorish mobster than sophisticated president. He's covered by a complicit evangelical base and a Republican Party that's less diverse, whiter, aging and dying off. Instead of diversifying, they're doubling down on "The Southern Strategy" for one last push for white supremacy, a push that will take the entire country and the world over an existential, unrecoverable cliff.

Either we're a Constitutional, Federal Republic...or, we're not.

This started...on a porch in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a miniscule distances from the site three Civil Rights workers - Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner - were murdered in 1964 for the "crime" (according to the KKK) of registering black voters:

"I still believe the answer to any problem lies with the people. I believe in states' rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level, and I believe we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment." Ronald Reagan

1964...the year the Civil Rights Act passed. Followed by 1965...the year the Voting Rights Act passed. Three years later, we lost Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as the Fair Housing Act passed. It was also the year, finally, Richard M. Nixon after Lyndon B. Johnson refused to run for reelection - was elected "law and order" president, running and winning on The Southern Strategy born of racist fear.

The seventies was a loss of innocence with the shame of "losing" the un-winnable Vietnam War, the near impeachment of Nixon, his pardon and his successor getting beaten by a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia, himself only serving one term due to the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The eighties was muscular, toxic masculinity disguised as action heroes: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis were young then and box office sensations. They were also admittedly as republican as "the gipper." Arnold would become governor of California and his fiscal failures turned what was a large land mass red state to almost reliably blue. After his affair on Maria Shriver, he's redeeming himself as a climate advocate and adversary to the current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Tom Steyer nor "Auntie Maxine" needs tell us.

Article 1, Section 1:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Article 2, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Some caveats and perspective: Secretary Clinton in a Washington Post op ed cautioned a rush to impeachment. The historical memory in this country is deliberately brief, as history nor civics is seldom taught in secondary education. There were Watergate hearings on ABC, CBS and NBC. There was daily education on a president that had just won a landslide reelection - 49 out of 50 states - that didn't need burglary or "plumbers" committing. The case was made to the American people over 28 months, and even after the tapes became public, he STILL had a 24% approval rating among his ardent supporters when it was evident he was going to get impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate by members of his own party. This was the foundation for Roger Ailes to form what would become Fox Propaganda.

Impeachment isn't about conviction: it’s about The Constitution.

We’re either “a nation of laws, and not of men,” or we’re a nation of ONE man.

Either “no one is above the law,” or every elected official can “shoot someone on 5th Avenue” and get away with it.

Impeachment isn't about this president: it’s about the NEXT president.

If THIS one gets away with his clear crimes, every nation can pass information to the candidate they would desire for president as a matter of "diplomacy." No president will ever have to divest from their business if they have one. Jimmy Carter gave up his peanut farm, so he would not violate the Emoluments Clause. No presidential candidate will EVER again show their taxes, and thus open to bribes and manipulation by distant actors. Government "of the people, by the people and for the people" will go from Russian handler to Russian roulette.

We either do this, or we’re not a country: we're a kleptocracy.

Either we're a Constitutional, Federal Republic...or, whatever emerges after this Caligula will not resemble our best self-mythology. It will be too stark, too dark: too dystopian.

For our granddaughter, I must fight until my last breath for her future...because it is hers.

Quantum Robustness...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 25, 2019 at 5:00am

A study demonstrates that a combination of two materials, aluminum and indium arsenide, forming a device called a Josephson junction could make quantum bits more resilient. Credit: University of Copenhagen image/Antonio Fornieri

Topics: Computer Science, Quantum Computing, Quantum Mechanics

Researchers have been trying for many years to build a quantum computer that industry could scale up, but the building blocks of quantum computing, qubits, still aren't robust enough to handle the noisy environment of what would be a quantum computer.

A theory developed only two years ago proposed a way to make qubits more resilient through combining a semiconductor, indium arsenide, with a superconductor, aluminum, into a planar device. Now, this theory has received experimental support in a device that could also aid the scaling of qubits.

This semiconductor-superconductor combination creates a state of "topological superconductivity," which would protect against even slight changes in a qubit's environment that interfere with its quantum nature, a renowned problem called "decoherence."

The device is potentially scalable because of its flat "planar" surface – a platform that industry already uses in the form of silicon wafers for building classical microprocessors.

The work, published in Nature, was led by the Microsoft Quantum lab at the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute, which fabricated and measured the device. The Microsoft Quantum lab at Purdue University grew the semiconductor-superconductor heterostructure using a technique called molecular beam epitaxy, and performed initial characterization measurements.

New robust device may scale up quantum tech, researchers say, Kayla Wiles, Purdue University

Near the Levee...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 24, 2019 at 5:00am

Credit: Mario Tama Getty Images

Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming

Related spoken word piece: Near the Levee

We cannot exist as a nation without a basic acceptance of common facts. I can't say "2+2=4" and another "2+2=5" and we BOTH be correct!

Abortion: Let's accept hormonal teenagers are likely to do something a little more than "make out" and pet heavily. They have myriad means of gathering information on the sexual act. We can educate them on birth control and responsible sexual behavior as the Netherlands does. Or, we can try "abstinence only" and get abysmal teen pregnancy rates as many red states do.

Climate Change: A sane republican administration accepting the science might use cap and trade policies to make polluting uncomfortable for manufactures financially. Compliance would be a matter of the bottom-line.

A democratic administration did something: The Paris Agreement was landmark policy, involving "an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance, signed in 2016. The agreement's language was negotiated by representatives of 196 state parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Le Bourget, near Paris, France, and adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015.[4][5] As of March 2019, 195 UNFCCC members have signed the agreement, and 185 have become party to it.[1] The Paris Agreement's long-term goal is to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels; and to limit the increase to 1.5 °C, since this would substantially reduce the risks and effects of climate change." They might actually spearhead green technologies, spurring economic and job growth.

We're not at a sane point in our republic now.

#P4TC related link: Hidden History 1 February 2017...

The $14 billion network of levees and floodwalls that was built to protect greater New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was a seemingly invincible bulwark against flooding.

But now, 11 months after the Army Corps of Engineers completed one of the largest public works projects in world history, the agency says the system will stop providing adequate protection in as little as four years because of rising sea levels and shrinking levees.

The growing vulnerability of the New Orleans area is forcing the Army Corps to begin assessing repair work, including raising hundreds of miles of levees and floodwalls that form a meandering earth and concrete fortress around the city and its adjacent suburbs.

After a $14-Billion Upgrade, New Orleans' Levees Are Sinking, Thomas Frank, Scientific American

Super State...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 23, 2019 at 5:00am

Super state: three independent groups have caught sight of supersolidity. (Courtesy: iStock/3quarks)

Topics: Bose-Einstein Condensate, Condensed Matter Physics, Electromagnetism, Quantum Mechanics

Atomic systems that behave very much like supersolids have been created independently by teams of physicists in Italy, Germany have Austria. The teams have shown that dipolar quantum gases trapped by magnetic fields can spontaneously separate into arrays of coherent droplets, providing a system closer to the original conception of a supersolid.

The supersolid phase is a counterintuitive quantum state of matter that has both crystalline order and frictionless flow at very low temperatures. The phenomenon is related to superfluidity and was predicted 50 years ago by Soviet physicists Alexander Andreev and Ilya Lifschitz. However, supersolidity has proved frustratingly difficult to observe.

In a superfluid, the energy required to create a density modulation generally increases as the modulation’s wavelength gets shorter. At one characteristic wavelength, however, the energy takes a sudden dip – much as waves pass more easily through a crystal when the wavelength equals the separation between the atoms. If the superfluid were cold enough, Andreev and Lifschitz reasoned, the energy required would drop to zero at this wavelength. The superfluid would then spontaneously separate into tiny droplets, effectively forming an ordered crystal.

Supersolid behavior spotted in dipolar quantum gases, Tim Wogan, Physics World

Remnants...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 22, 2019 at 5:00am

An artist's impression of the planetesimal orbiting on a 2-hour period within the gaseous disc around SDSS J1228+1040 (by Mark Garlick).

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Spectrograph, White Dwarfs

When the hydrogen fuel that keeps a star like our sun burning brightly is exhausted, the star expands into a red giant before collapsing into a hot, dense white dwarf. Although the stellar swelling engulfs nearby planets, theoretical models suggest that some planets and planetary cores up to hundreds of kilometers in diameter can survive the star’s death and fall into closer orbit. But identifying solid bodies around a dim stellar core is difficult. Now Christopher Manser (University of Warwick) and colleagues have used a new spectroscopic method to identify a planetesimal orbiting a white dwarf 400 light-years from our solar system.

Astronomers have discovered most exoplanets—including an asteroid-like body orbiting a white dwarf—via the transit method, identifying periodic dimming as an object passes in front of its host star. But the method requires a lucky geometry of the planetary system’s orbital plane relative to Earth. Manser and his team instead turned to short-cadence optical spectroscopy using data from the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias in Spain. They focused on one of just a few white dwarfs that, based on metal emission lines in the stellar and disk spectra, are suspected to be surrounded by disks of gas and dust. Minute-by-minute observations over several nights in 2017 and 2018 let the researchers deconstruct the light emanating from the disk and determine how much variation had occurred over a year.

A glimpse of a planetary system’s final stages, Rachel Berkowitz, Physics Today

The Insistent Center...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 19, 2019 at 5:00am

Image Source: Facebook

Topics: African Americans, Civics, Existentialism, Extinction

NK Jemisin is an African American author of speculative fiction. She's also the victim of a group of trolls on the Internet referring to themselves as the "sad puppies"/"rabid puppies" because of the lack of Euro-centric main characters in her stories, which for the author IS the point.

Sonequa Martin-Green, lead on the CBS All Access Star Trek: Discovery was vilified by the same alt-right, racists that could not see anyone other than the clone of Buck Rogers, James T. Kirk, Jean Luc Picard: White Anglo Saxon Protestant, Cisgender (WASP-C) males as the central "hero" figure and ruminations of fictional "white genocide."

A man who earned his law degree, passed the (ironically) bar and served the nation as Attorney General for the George H.W. Bush administration was also the architect of pardons for key figures in the Iran-Contra Scandal. His 19-page unsolicited memo/job solicitation born of the effectiveness of Rupert Murdoch propaganda cum Fox "News" as he likely regularly consumed that informed his treatise. He was on point yesterday as he dusted off the 80's play book to try the formula on an international audience viewing on cable, Internet and social media. He was immediately labeled a pitiful hack, a caricature of a country bumpkin lawyer and NOT the nation's attorney, but the current president's* Roy Cohn.

William Barr lied. His boss's staff lied. His boss is a prolific liar, telling 8,718 as tabulated January of this year. The Mueller Report - redacted or not - only confirms what we already know and that the hypocrisy of the white evangelical right rises to the stench of dung hills. The institution is the white-washed sepulcher of white nationalism. It is the spur of the exodus with organized religion in the US.

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44

There are TEN attempts to obstruct justice in the report. Despite lies told to Mueller by his then deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders, despite the fact the report did NOT exonerate him, his minions, his staff, his fascist cult base will claim total exoneration, because facts and fascism are not on speaking terms. They never have been.

GONE are the halcyon days of Grey Poupon and Tan Suit scandals breathlessly pursued by Sean Hannity et al. President Obama DID golf during his presidency as did his WASP-C predecessors, but his current successor has taken golfing to steroidal levels, greeted by the same right wing propaganda echo chamber...with crickets.

All these intersect in Venn diagram fashion of centrality: of a 400-year insistence that the stories told about our country has one hue, one type of damsel in distress and one repeating, ad nausem conclusion: the hero is white, heteronormal.

And that hero has to be white because our concepts of god is a white male in the sky, judging and damning every aspect of our existence. Therefore the president in tan suit with Melanin is an aberration from the mental ideal we've been conditioned to respect and accept.

Let me be blunt:

1. The POTUS is a crook. As David Frum points out, it may be a choice of the current presidency*, or rule of law.

2. He is a racist. He doesn't have to wear a swastika; a Klan hood or quote chapter and verse of Mein Kamph. As George Will opined, he's barely on speaking terms with the English language. He's an admitted nationalist. He's tweeted against a sitting congresswoman and Somali immigrant that has increased death threats against her. He's too cowardly to do his own violence, but he's pyromaniac enough to light the fire and run.

3. The AG is a hack and a liar.

We’re not a democratic republic; not even an oligarchy or kleptocracy. We’re a kakistocracy: “government under the control of a nation's worst or least-qualified citizens.”

This is what Rome looked like before it fell.

This is what - for our own survival - we have to fix.

Gil Scott-Heron: B-Movie, Genius Lyrics (both insightful analysis and prophecy).

Wormhole Slow-Mo...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 18, 2019 at 5:00am

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Topics: Black Holes, Einstein, General Relativity, Science Fiction, Wormholes

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Good Reads

A Harvard physicist has shown that wormholes can exist: tunnels in curved space-time, connecting two distant places, through which travel is possible.

But don't pack your bags for a trip to other side of the galaxy yet; although it's theoretically possible, it's not useful for humans to travel through, said the author of the study, Daniel Jafferis, from Harvard University, written in collaboration with Ping Gao, also from Harvard and Aron Wall from Stanford University.

"It takes longer to get through these wormholes than to go directly, so they are not very useful for space travel," Jafferis said. He will present his findings at the 2019 American Physical Society April Meeting in Denver.

Despite his pessimism for pan-galactic travel, he said that finding a way to construct a wormhole through which light could travel was a boost in the quest to develop a theory of quantum gravity.

Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow, American Institute of Physics, Phys.org

Snow TENG...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 17, 2019 at 5:00am

A new nanogenerator could harvest energy directly from snow, helping solar panels deal with wintry conditions(Credit: karin59 /Depositphotos)

Topics: Alternative Energy, Green Energy, Green Tech, Nanotechnology

Snowy places aren't ideal for harvesting solar energy – panels can't do much if they're buried under blankets of snow, of course. Now a team from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) has developed a new device that can produce electricity from snow itself.

The team calls the new device a snow-based triboelectric nanogenerator, or Snow TENG. As the name suggests it works off the triboelectric effect, meaning it uses static electricity to generate a charge through the exchange of electrons. These kinds of devices have been used to make generators that pull energy from body movements, touchscreens, and even footsteps on floors.

Snow is positively charged, so rubbing it against a material with the opposite charge allows energy to be drawn out of it. After a comprehensive series of testing, the team settled on silicone as the most effective material.

The Snow TENG, which is 3D printable, is made with a layer of silicone attached to an electrode. The team says it could be integrated into solar panels, so they can continue generating electricity even when covered with snow, making it similar to an earlier hybrid solar cell that also harvested energy from the movement of raindrops on its surface.

Snow-powered nanogenerator works where solar panels don't
Michael Irving, New Atlas

Distant Cousins...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 16, 2019 at 5:00am

Callao Cave, Luzon Island, The Philippines

Image credits:
Callao Cave Archaeology Project

Topics: Biology, DNA, Evolution, History, Research

(Inside Science) -- In a jungle cave in the Philippines, scientists have discovered fossils of what may be a new human species they call Homo luzonensis. The newfound teeth and bones combine primitive and modern traits in a way never previously seen together in one species, and suggest much remains to be discovered about human evolution outside Africa.

Image Source: Homo luzonensis

Although modern humans, Homo sapiens, are now the only surviving branch of the genus Homo, other species of humans once roamed across Earth. For example, previous research suggested Homo erectus, the most likely ancestor of modern humans, made its way out of Africa by at least 1.8 million years ago. In contrast, modern humans may have only begun dispersing from Africa roughly 200,000 years ago.

Fifteen years ago, scientists revealed an unusual extinct human species from the Indonesian island of Flores -- Homo floresiensis, often called "the hobbit" due to its diminutive size, which lived on Earth during the same time as modern humans. This finding hinted that other hominins -- any relatives of modern humans dating from after our ancestors split from those of chimpanzees -- might await discovery in Southeast Asia.

Researchers Find a New Ancient Human Species in the Philippines
Charles Q. Choi, Live Science

Ethics of Genesis...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 15, 2019 at 5:00am

MS. TECH; EVOLUTION: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Topics: Biology, Ethics, Genetics, Science Fiction

Note: The article "went there" before I could.

"Beware the beast man, for he is the devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home, and yours. Shun him... for he is the harbinger of death." Internet Movie Database, Planet of the Apes (1968) Synopsis

*****

Human intelligence is one of evolution’s most consequential inventions. It is the result of a sprint that started millions of years ago, leading to ever bigger brains and new abilities. Eventually, humans stood upright, took up the plow, and created civilization, while our primate cousins stayed in the trees.

Now scientists in southern China report that they've tried to narrow the evolutionary gap, creating several transgenic macaque monkeys with extra copies of a human gene suspected of playing a role in shaping human intelligence.

“This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model,” says Bing Su, the geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology who led the effort.

According to their findings, the modified monkeys did better on a memory test involving colors and block pictures, and their brains also took longer to develop—as those of human children do. There wasn’t a difference in brain size.

Su’s monkeys raise some unusual questions about animal rights. In 2010, Sikela and three colleagues wrote a paper called “The ethics of using transgenic non-human primates to study what makes us human,” in which they concluded that human brain genes should never be added to apes, such as chimpanzees, because they are too similar to us.

“You just go to the Planet of the Apes immediately in the popular imagination,” says Jacqueline Glover, a University of Colorado bioethicist who was one of the authors. “To humanize them is to cause harm. Where would they live and what would they do? Do not create a being that can’t have a meaningful life in any context.”

*****

Not to go all Cassandra on you, but...

At the story's heart is Caesar (Andy Serkis), a chimpanzee who gains human-like intelligence and emotions from an experimental drug. Raised like a child by the drug's creator, Will Rodman (James Franco) and a primatologist Caroline Aranha (Freida Pinto), Caesar ultimately finds himself taken from the humans he loves and imprisoned in an ape sanctuary in San Bruno. Seeking justice for his fellow inmates, Caesar gives the fellow apes the same drug that he inherited. He then assembles a simian army and escapes the sanctuary - putting man and ape on a collision course that could change the planet forever. Internet Movie Database, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) Storyline

Chinese scientists have put human brain genes in monkeys—and yes, they may be smarter
Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review

Sunshine Fascism...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 12, 2019 at 5:00am

Source: Ecosia Images

Topics: Civics, Existentialism, History, Politics

"We are a people of different religions, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls... We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity … in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people." (1928) Wikiquote: Religious views of Adolf Hitler

*****

Fascism is a movement that promotes the idea of a forcibly monolithic, regimented nation under the control of an autocratic ruler. The word fascism comes from fascio, the Italian word for bundle, which in this case represents bundles of people. Its origins go back to Ancient Rome, when the fasces was a bundle of wood with an ax head, carried by leaders.

On March 23, 1919, the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento — a group that grew out of a number of earlier movements that had also used the image of the fascio in their names — met for the first time in Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan. At this rally, Mussolini said that membership in the new group “commits all fascists to sabotaging the candidacies of the neutralists of all parties by any means necessary.”

“Mussolini thought that democracy was a failed system. He thought that liberty of expression and liberty of parties was a sham, and that fascism would organize people under state power,” Ben-Ghiat says. “Their idea was you would be freer because you wouldn't have any class consciousness. You’re just supposed to worship the nation. It’s nation over class.”

The corollary of that belief was the idea that anything that might impede national unity had to be gotten rid of, and violently. In fact, violence was seen as beneficial to society.

And “society” was not a loosely defined idea. Rather, Mussolini and those who came after him had very specific ideas about who got to be part of the nation. It followed that those who did not fit the mold were seen as disruptive to that unity, and thus subject to violence.

What to Know About the Origins of Fascism’s Brutal Ideology, Olivia B. Waxman, Time

To set the tone for a dystopian movie, one typically gets a noir treatment: lighting is dark, air is misty; camera angles are stark and weather is typically overcast. The decision to "go glum" is likely due to only having a few hours to make their point and resolve any plot twists to the denouement and conclusion. An in-your-face theatrical release might involve swastikas, goose stepping and nostalgic, feel-good faux patriotism.

Even though there have been decidedly darker days under authoritarian regimes, every day looks like any other day when ruled by fascism. There are for example, photos of Hitler on holiday at his villa in Bavaria. It looked sunny; he (for a monster) looked happy.

Democracy depends on a shared set of facts that can be debated in discussed either in a court, on a congressional floor or near a coffee machine at work. It's affable and seeks a happy medium: no one gets everything they desire, but it does require compromise.

Fascism is nothing at all like that. Like George Orwell's famous novel, "1984," fascism requires and demands power for its own sake. It wants what it wants for the sake of wanting. History has no meaning to it at all. Logic and reason have no appeal or sway in people who traffic in "alternative facts" or its Karl Rove precursor: "created realities."

- It is why you can justify the outright theft of land from First Nations' peoples and slaughter them at will for "Manifest Destiny."

- It is why you can have the transatlantic slave trade with no moral or monetary compensation (reparations) to its African Diaspora descendants.

- It is why they demonize people of color as "lazy, shiftless, moochers and cheats" on all things, particularly academic, and now the SAT college scandal has blown up the previous myth of meritocracy in their faces that they were desperate to maintain for credentials and supremacy.

- It is why as presidential Manchurian Candidate, can say "WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks," and on the arrest of Julian Assange can say with a straight, orange face "I know nothing about WikiLeaks."

- It is why the same can incite violence of his followers and deny doing so in the same breath.

- It is why the Attorney General can send an unsolicited 19 page memo campaigning for a job to essentially not be the top cop, but the president's personal Roy Cohn and slow walk the Mueller Report to Congress and the public.

- It is why we insist on telling ourselves comforting fables about American benevolence; about being Winthrop's "shining city on a hill" (who himself had no stomach for "the other") so as to not face our own national depravity...

...our own foundation of racism, sexism, homophobia, genocide and fascism.

Giovanni Gentile (not Mussolini) coined the phrase "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." But this is not what access media conglomerates will say about it. They'll pretend there is still a middle ground that only requires compromise and clever arguments. They will still opine for a former, mythological days where things worked if only (typically) democrats gave concessions to republicans' demands.

During the Great Depression, Marine Major General Smedley Butler narced on what was called the Business Plot to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Butler as a dictator compliant to corporate interests. He wrote the treatise "War is a Racket."

There are quite a few American billionaire families with Nazis ties, starting with Ford, GM, Chrysler, IBM, and JP Morgan Chase. The Koch’s father did business with the Nazis and Russians. The Bush’s and Kennedy’s (Prescott and Papa Joe) were Nazi sympathizers.

Ayn Rand provided the fictional cover: behind every massive fortune, there are likely crimes.

*****

To set the tone for a dystopian movie, one typically gets a noir treatment: lighting is dark, air is misty; camera angles are stark and weather is typically overcast.

When you tell yourself comforting lies, a liar may ascend to power.

Fascism like weather can change its environs and display its power on blithe, sunny days.

Event Horizon...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 11, 2019 at 5:00am

Scientists have obtained the first-ever image of a black hole — at center of the galaxy M87. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al.

Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Cosmology, Einstein

(Yesterday) At six simultaneous press conferences around the globe, astronomers on Wednesday announced they had accomplished the seemingly impossible: taking a picture of a black hole, a cosmic monster so voracious that light itself cannot escape its clutches.

This historic feat, performed by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)—a planet-spanning network of radio observatories—required more than a decade of effort. The project’s name refers to a black hole’s most defining characteristic, an “event horizon” set by the object’s mass and spin beyond which no infalling material, including light, can ever return.

“We have taken the first picture of a black hole,” the EHT project’s director, Sheperd Doeleman, said in a news release. “This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers.”

The image unveils the shadowy face of a 6.5-billion-solar-mass supermassive black hole at the core of Messier 87 (M87), a large galaxy some 55 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo galaxy cluster. Such objects are a reflection of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which predicts that only so much material can be squeezed into any given volume before the overwhelming force of its accumulated gravity causes a collapse—a warp in the fabric of spacetime that swallows itself. Left behind is an almost featureless nothingness that, for lack of better terms, scientists simply call a black hole.

"Gargantua," special effects from the movie, Interstellar, 2014 (Kip Thorne et al guessed right):

Image Source: HDQ Walls dot com

At Last, a Black Hole’s Image Revealed, Lee Billings, Scientific American

Quantum Droplets...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 10, 2019 at 5:00am

For ultracold experiments, atoms are held in vacuum by a glass cell, shown here. The atoms are then cooled to ultralow temperatures to create a Bose–Einstein condensate. (Photo courtesy of Wolfram Scheible.)

Topics: Bose-Einstein Condensate, Condensed Matter Physics, van der Waals

In his PhD thesis from 1873, Johannes van der Waals devised a theoretical framework to describe the gas and liquid phases of a molecular ensemble and the phase transition from one to the other. That work resulted in the celebrated equation of state bearing his name. To this day, the van der Waals theory is still the prevailing picture in most physicists’ minds to explain the emergence of the liquid state. It asserts that the liquid state arises at high densities from an equilibrium between attractive interatomic forces and short-range repulsion. Now, a new type of liquid has emerged in ultracold, extremely dilute atomic systems for which the van der Waals model does not predict a liquid phase.

Using the tools of laser cooling and trapping, experimenters can reach the ultracold regime to create atomic quantum gases.1 Quantum interference effects between atoms are an important part of the statistical descriptions of those systems. However, if a monatomic ensemble is simply cooled, any chemical species will form a liquid instead of a gas due to van der Waals forces and the system will never reach the quantum regime. So to see quantum effects, the classical liquid state must be avoided. That requires extremely low densities that keep the distances between atoms much larger than the range of attractive forces that would bind the liquid. But keeping the atoms far apart traps them in a dilute, metastable state. A whole new mechanism is needed for atoms in such dilute conditions to form a liquid phase.

Ultradilute Quantum Droplets, Igor Ferrier-Barbut, Physics Today
Igor Ferrier-Barbut is a researcher at the Institut d’Optique and CNRS in Palaiseau, France.

Lumpy Neutron Stars...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 9, 2019 at 5:00am

An artist’s rendition of a neutron star. Credit: Kevin Gill Flickr (CC by 2.0)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Einstein, Gravitational Waves, Neutron Stars

Gravitational waves—the ghostly ripples in spacetime first predicted by Einstein and finally detected a century later by advanced observatories—have sparked a revolution in astrophysics, revealing the otherwise-hidden details of merging black holes and neutron stars. Now, scientists have used these waves to open another new window on the universe, providing new constraints on neutron stars' exact shapes. The result will aid researchers in their ongoing quest to understand the inner workings of these exotic objects.

So far, 11 gravitational-wave events have been detected by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) interferometers in Washington and Louisiana and the Virgo gravitational-wave observatory in Italy. Of these events, 10 came from mergers of binary black holes, and one from the merger of two neutron stars. In all cases, the form of the waves matched the predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

For the binary black hole events, the passing waves lasted less than a second; for the merging neutron stars, the emissions occurred for about 100 seconds. But such rapid pulses aren't the only types of gravitational waves that could be streaming through the universe. In particular, solitary neutron stars might be emitting detectable gravitational waves as they spin—signals that could reveal important new details of the stars' topography and internal composition.

Gravitational Observatories Hunt for Lumpy Neutron Stars
David Appell, Scientific American

AI, Control and Turing...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 8, 2019 at 5:00am

Image Source: Comic Book dot com - Star Trek

Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Existentialism, Star Trek

If you're fan enough as I am to pay for the CBS streaming service (it has some benefits: Young Sheldon and the umpteenth reboot of The Twilight Zone hosted by Oscar winner Jordan Peele), the AI in Starfleet's "Control" looks an awful lot like...The Borg. I've enjoyed the latest iteration immensely, and I'm rooting for at least a season 3.

There's already speculation on Screen Rant that this might be some sort of galactic "butterfly effect." Discovery has taken some license with my previous innocence even before Section 31: we're obviously not "the good guys" with phasers, technobabble and karate chops as I once thought.

That of course has been the nature of speculative fiction since Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein: that playing God, humanity would manage to create something that just might kill us. Various objects from nuclear power to climate change has taken on this personification. I've often wondered if intelligence is its own Entropy. Whole worlds above us might be getting along just fine without a single invention of language, science, tools, cities or spaceflight, animal species living and dying without anything more than their instinct, hunger and the inbred need to procreate unless a meteor sends them into extinction. Homo sapien or homo stultus...

It is the Greek word mimesis we translate to mean "imitate" but can actually be more accurately said as "re-presentation." It is the Plato-Aristotle origin of the colloquial phrase "art imitates life."

Re-presented for your consumption and contemplation:

Yoshua Bengio is one of three computer scientists who last week shared the US$1-million A. M. Turing award — one of the field’s top prizes.

The three artificial-intelligence (AI) researchers are regarded as the founders of deep learning, the technique that combines large amounts of data with many-layered artificial neural networks, which are inspired by the brain. They received the award for making deep neural networks a “critical component of computing”.

The other two Turing winners, Geoff Hinton and Yann LeCun, work for Google and Facebook, respectively; Bengio, who is at the University of Montreal, is one of the few recognized gurus of machine learning to have stayed in academia full time.

But alongside his research, Bengio, who is also scientific director of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA), has raised concerns about the possible risks from misuse of technology. In December, he presented a set of ethical guidelines for AI called the Montreal declaration at the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) meeting in the city.

Do you see a lot of companies or states using AI irresponsibly?

There is a lot of this, and there could be a lot more, so we have to raise flags before bad things happen. A lot of what is most concerning is not happening in broad daylight. It’s happening in military labs, in security organizations, in private companies providing services to governments or the police.

What are some examples?

Killer drones are a big concern. There is a moral question, and a security question. Another example is surveillance — which you could argue has potential positive benefits. But the dangers of abuse, especially by authoritarian governments, are very real. Essentially, AI is a tool that can be used by those in power to keep that power, and to increase it.

AI pioneer: ‘The dangers of abuse are very real’
Yoshua Bengio, winner of the prestigious Turing award for his work on deep learning, is establishing international guidelines for the ethical use of AI.
Davide Castelvecchi, Nature

Antithesis of Wisdom...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 5, 2019 at 5:00am

Topics: Biology, Civics, Climate Change, Existentialism, Entropy, Mars, Politics

Chimpanzees look up to those they consider to be more prestigious, echoing the way that young people admire celebrities such as David Beckham and Cheryl Cole, according to a new study. Researchers found that apes copy the actions of those they consider to have high status within their group.

Professor Whiten commented, “Teenagers look to pop stars as social models, copying their clothing, mannerisms and speech. Adults are inspired by prominent members of their society, such as successful professionals. Our study shows that chimpanzees are similarly selective in their choice of trend setters.” [1]

*****

Abstract

Humans follow the example of prestigious, high-status individuals much more readily than that of others, such as when we copy the behavior of village elders, community leaders, or celebrities. This tendency has been declared uniquely human, yet remains untested in other species. Experimental studies of animal learning have typically focused on the learning mechanism rather than on social issues, such as who learns from whom. The latter, however, is essential to understanding how habits spread. Here we report that when given opportunities to watch alternative solutions to a foraging problem performed by two different models of their own species, chimpanzees preferentially copy the method shown by the older, higher-ranking individual with a prior track-record of success. Since both solutions were equally difficult, shown an equal number of times by each model and resulted in equal rewards, we interpret this outcome as evidence that the preferred model in each of the two groups tested enjoyed a significant degree of prestige in terms of whose example other chimpanzees chose to follow. Such prestige-based cultural transmission is a phenomenon shared with our own species. If similar biases operate in wild animal populations, the adoption of culturally transmitted innovations may be significantly shaped by the characteristics of performers. [2]

*****

Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica is often referred to as the "Doomsday glacier" because of its sheer size and position as "'backstop' for four other glaciers which holds an additional 10-13 feet of sea level rise." [3] Add the two feet of sea level Thwaites holds and Florida may have a little more to fear than the denials of their republican senators on the impact of climate change.

I've used the term fascism before, not because it's powerful but because it's stupid. The basis of its appeal is fear: fear of the "other," fear of the future, fear particularly of a supposed loss of birth numbers, therefore future voters and numerical power. So-called "white" supremacy has always been a math game of bad algebra and pure ignorance.

But it does not benefit the crowd proudly without Melanin, intellect and possessing MAGA hats: the celebrity chimps with all the bananas above them they worship use the faux demarcation points of politically constructed cultural differences to rob blind the very people that become their shock troops. Rigging elections is not beneath the 1% simians, as they've motivated their rubes that their "white" team won, despite the lack of sharing of spoils after said rigging, Russian interference or not. Socialism is thrown up as demon while demons rob rubes. They ask for "trick-down" bananas" and get feces. Smoking causing cancer must be denied. Humans causing climate impact MUST be denied until the last drop of oil; the last fracking of methane. Then, the royal chimpanzees will wall themselves up as sea levels rise, soundproof beyond "weeping and gnashing of teeth." They'll have extra bananas to live on as the rest of the planet starves. Eventually, their impressive supplies will run out. Perhaps they'll resort to the cannibalism as the Jamestown colonists did in desperation, eating their own children first. Eventually they will see their last sunrise in splendid, decaying mansions atop a canopy of the forest they razed. Currently, their high potentate Orange Orangutan cannot discriminate "orange" and "origin"; that his own father was born in the Bronx and not the Germany and thinks windmills causes cancer.

Homo sapiens, (Latin: “wise man”) the species to which all modern human beings belong. Homo sapiens is one of several species grouped into the genus Homo, but it is the only one that is not extinct. [YET] See also human evolution. Source: Britannica

Entropy - the measure of a system's thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system. Encyclopedia Britannica

Having stupid citizens also serves a more ‘noble’ purpose. Although most of us want to be treated as intelligent beings, it is also in the interest of ruling parties – be they political or religious – to have an overall stupid population, dumb enough to make them controllable. Education and knowledge are being pushed aside in favour of technical training. Governments are more interested in a highly-skilled labour force than in critical and intelligent citizens. The media feed the population with ready-made entertainment and information, thus forming people’s minds according to what is preferable for the overall functioning of society. Zoereei, Homo stultus

Mars may have been a living world once. We still study it. We wish to terraform it. Mars as a world still takes 687 days to complete its year. It will take 365.25 days for Earth to complete its year...whether we're here, or not.

Homo Stultus - foolish man, stupid man: the chimps are exonerated.

1. Chimpanzee trend-setters: New study shows that chimps 'ape' the prestigious, University of St. Andrews, 2010, Phys.org
2. Prestige Affects Cultural Learning in Chimpanzees, Victoria Horner, Darby Proctor, Kristin E. Bonnie, Andrew Whiten, Frans B. M. de Waal, PLOS Journal
3. A glacier the size of Florida is on track to change the course of human civilization. Pakalolo, Daily Kos

Sagittarius A...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 4, 2019 at 5:00am

Getty Images

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Black Holes, Cosmology, Einstein

They've captured our imaginations for decades, but we've never actually photographed a black hole before – until now.

Next Wednesday, at several press briefings around the world, scientists will apparently unveil humanity's first-ever photo of a black hole, the European Space Agency said in a statement. Specifically, the photo will be of "Sagittarius A," the supermassive black hole that's at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

But aren't black holes, well, black, and thus invisible, so none of our telescopes can "see" them? Yes – therefore the image we're likely to see will be of the "event horizon," the edge of the black hole where light can't escape. [1]

*****

Next week, a collection of countries around the world are going to make a big announcement, and no one is sure exactly what it’s going to be. However, there are some possibilities, and the most exciting one is that they are about to reveal the first-ever photograph of the event horizon of a black hole.

Taking a photo of a black hole is not an easy task. Not only are black holes famous for not letting any light escape, even the nearest known black holes are very far away. The specific black hole astronomers wanted to photograph, Sagittarius A*, lies at the center of our galaxy 25,000 light-years away.

The international Event Horizon Telescope project announced its plan to photograph Sagittarius A* back in 2017, and they enlisted some of the world’s biggest telescopes to help out. The researchers used half a dozen radio telescopes, including the ALMA telescope in Chile and the James Clerk Maxwell telescope in Hawaii, to stare at Sagittarius A* over the past two years.

And while a picture of the black hole itself is impossible, the EHT astronomers were really aiming at the next best thing: the event horizon, the border of the black hole beyond which not even light can escape. At the event horizon, gravity is so strong that light will orbit the black hole like planets orbit stars, and our telescopes should be able to pick that up. [2]

1. 'Something no human has seen before': The first-ever photograph of a black hole will likely be unveiled next week, Doyle Rice, USA Today
2. We Might Be About to See the First Ever Photo of a Black Hole, Avery Thomson, Popular Mechanics

February Twenty-Eight...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 28, 2019 at 6:30am

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Education, Human Rights, Women's Rights

"Love, truth and justice must fight again." Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

Note: For this month as last year, I started the posting with the title February One... depicting the significance of the day in Greensboro, NC A&T and this nation's history. The urgency of the crisis with Bennett defined every day as its own encapsulation of history, so it led to spelling out the dates for each post this year. Every day beyond February is a day in the nation's history.

I will also be taking a break after today until 4 April. I have to get ready for a conference in Florida, my Master's thesis defense and application to the doctoral program in Nanoengineering. It will be a minute...

*****

This is an audio file of Dr. Barber's remarks at the 59th annual observance of the sit-in movement, February 1, 1960. The entire event was live-streamed on Facebook, which encompassed excellent choir performances, comments and civic awards. Dr. Barber made these remarks without notes, or as millennials say, "straight off the dome." He was impressive, humorous, passionate, cogent and powerful. I used his portrait from NC A&T's website as an intro to this month and this audio reproduction. This admittedly imperfect audio provides what I hope is an appropriate outtro.

*****

This month started at a stated crisis of funding for Bennett College. They exceeded their stated public goal of 5 million dollars, raising 8.2 million dollars. Despite that, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools headquartered in Georgia, where Stacey Abrams lost her bid for governor by theft, decided to revoke their accreditation prompting an appropriate lawsuit by Bennett. I hope for their continued success and accreditation with either SACS or from another agency.

This crisis then became a curiosity: how many HBCUs are there? Having attended one doesn't mean I have this info "at the ready." I found a website that listed the total at 107, some of them sadly for previous funding crises like Bennett just recently encountered, now closed. Rather than just give a single link and call it a day, I decided to give whatever history the schools made public. I published the history of the ones closed as well, as precious jewels lost. A classmate in California coordinates as part of an HBCU college fair and displays A&T to a lot of African American youth that for the fair probably would not have heard of Aggie Land or any others. Once upon a time due to De Jure segregation, these were our only options. Now with the Internet literally in our hip pockets, we're more focused on other things and being a part of other cliques versus connection with legacies. Anonymity and apathy can lead to future funding crises and closures. We cannot allow ignorance and neglect to self-foreclose our own legacies.

The list of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) had striking similarities:

1. Many were started or headed by African American women - many during a time when American women as a whole didn't have the right to vote.

2. The institutions started somewhere around the Civil War, soon after or inspired by other examples before them.

3. Many were associated or affiliated with either a church or ministries, not interested in expanding "prosperity gospel," but emancipation and opportunity.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. U.S. Constitution - Preamble

The very things a freed and exploited people would demand of the nation they had served ceaselessly without compensation or reparations, long overdue. That freedom - imperfect as it is - appears to be under assault by foreign actors and their installed puppet.

And mere years after the savagery of penal slavery, my ancestors wanted themselves and their posterity educated, something during slavery they were systematically denied. Full emancipation is the self-actualization of determining one's own future through one's own efforts, unimpeded by faux social barriers and bigotry.

The other commonality I've personally experienced is the comity of being an alumni. We wear the paraphernalia of our respective universities and identify each other as Aggies, Bison; Eagles, Rams (NC A&T, Howard, NC Central and Winston-Salem State University, respectively). We have greetings like "Aggie Pride" shared with each other publicly and openly. We feel the weight and pride of our ancestors and the history that came before us. We express our joy at homecoming games and tailgates. We are uncles and aunties to the children of close college friends: we are family.

The ONE true thing:

Humanity is one species descended originally from the African continent. Each of us has a measure of Carotene and Melanin, determined by where on the globe our ancestors encountered ultraviolet light and the chemical interactions it encouraged. "Race" is a political construct created by a kleptomaniacal few to manipulate the masses they openly disdain and steal from. It's being used here and overseas as the rise of right wing extremism is being exploited towards a dark end of expanding the old Russian empire. Here, they've done this since the Bacon's rebellion when so-called "white people" were created by the then 1%, as well as during and after the Civil War. I use the term in quotes because Titanium Dioxide is the die that is used in paint and dental fillings that upon absorption of all the colors of the spectrum reflect the color our eyes interpret as white. It's worked like a charm, so far.

A kleptomaniac has a mental disorder that compels the person to steal. Unlike a shoplifter, who will steal an item he or she wants or needs, a kleptomaniac steals for the thrill of stealing, often taking items that have little or no value. Vocabulary.com

I supplement this definition with one caveat: they are stealing something of significant value. They are stealing our wealth, our health and healthcare; the air we breath, the water we drink; the environment we'll leave our grandchildren. Wilber Ross during the contrived 35-day shutdown is a textbook case of how isolated and clueless he, and they are from the rest of humanity. His greenhouse footprint like most American oligarchs is probably more than anyone in his entire state combined. The sad part is, they feel entitled to "burn down the forest" while living in the bright sun and plentiful rain in the canopy of its trees. Eventually, karma has its say and the entire ecosystem fails, them included. Their very avarice is a slow motion, extinction-level event. T.S. Elliot's famous poem, "The Hollow Men" last lines - this is the way the world ends, not with a bang...but a whimper - become apropos, though there are many interpretations.

They did this during the 2016 elections that now see the "chickens coming home to roost" in taxes some of the MAGA enthusiasts are having to pay in. Tax cuts for kleptomaniacs work like that: when corporations are given 10-year tax breaks, it's the middle class property owners that pay for what would have been their fair share of taxes. If those same corporations and 1% receive a tax cut, it is all of us that pays that bill, meaning you may not get a refund this year as you are accustomed to, and many rudely found out. The kleptomaniacs are robbing us in plain sight, and using racial animus, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia to keep us divided because they KNOW if we grouped together, they would no longer have power over any of us. It's worked like a charm since the Bacon's rebellion, a history not taught and you ought to revisit. It's been passed down several generations now from one kleptomaniac sociopath to another, swallowed "hook, line and sinker" by one duped generation after another. Since no one seems to have caught on, why change a proven formula? It's probably through all his seemingly irrational word salad, what the Propecia Ferret wearing orange pumpkin head meant about "winning"... he wasn't talking about us: only his kind, which he's only marginally a part of in name only, as a peruse of his tax returns will likely reveal, along with huge loans from money-laundering Russia. That would compromise anyone, and we typically don't give a foreign asset the nuclear codes. I pray this madness ends soon, or the stress on our republic; body politics and ecosystems globally will result in catastrophic, unrecoverable failure, as predictable as the fall of Rome.

We have sojourned in this land 400 years since the first slaves arrived (not "indentured servants," Governor "Black Face" Northam), in 1619. The nation of Ghana has graciously extended the offer of the "Year of Return" to the African diaspora. Some of us may take them up on it. I hope we don't have to. Though this union is imperfect, we helped build it and have stake in its success. That means fighting: at the ballet box and as citizens.

The kleptos in our current swamp - R or D variety - will keep running this game for 400 more years...if we have the luxury of that much time, and if we let them.

"Love, truth and justice must fight again." Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

All together tirelessly, for the country, the planet and way of life we love.

The Final Four...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 28, 2019 at 6:00am

Winston-Salem State University Donald Julian Reaves Student Activity Center - Woolpert

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Education, Human Rights, Women's Rights

Wilberforce University

Wilberforce University is a four-year, fully accredited liberal arts institution offering 20 academic concentrations in business, communications, computing and engineering sciences, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. Wilberforce University also offers dual degree programs in architecture, aerospace, and nuclear engineering. Through the University’s Adult and Continuing Education Program, we offer Credentials for Leadership in Management and Business (CLIMB), for individuals interested in completing their bachelor of science degrees in organizational management, health care administration and information technology.

Early in 1856, the Methodist Episcopal Church purchased property for the new institution at Tawawa Springs, near Xenia, Ohio. For many years the institution operated with great success. The Civil War in 1862, shifted enrollment and financial support, unfortunately facilitating the closing of the original Wilberforce in 1862, for a year. In March of the 1863, Bishop Daniel A. Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal Church negotiated to purchase the University’s facilities. Payne, a member of the original 1856 corporation, secured the cooperation of John G. Mitchell, principal of the Eastern District Public School of Cincinnati, Ohio and James A. Shorter, pastor of the A.M.E. Church of Zanesville, Ohio. The property was soon turned over to them as agents of the church. The University was newly incorporated on July 10, 1863. In 1887 the State of Ohio began to fund the University by establishing a combined normal and industrial department. This department later became Central State University. Wilberforce also spawned another institution, Payne Theological Seminary. It was founded in 1891 as an outgrowth of the Theological Department at Wilberforce University. Today, Wilberforce University continues to build on its sacred traditions in the 21st Century.

Wiley College

In 1873, less than eight years after all hostilities were quieted from the Civil War, the Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church founded Wiley College near Marshall, Texas for the purpose of allowing Negro youth the opportunity to pursue higher learning in the arts, sciences and other professions.

Named in honor of Bishop Isaac William Wiley, an outstanding minister, medical missionary and educator, Wiley College was founded during turbulent times for Blacks in America. Although African-American males were given the right to vote in 1870, intimidation of America’s newest citizens in the form of violence increased. The U.S. Supreme Court helped pave the way for segregation with the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that approved of the “separate but equal” doctrine.

Bishop Wiley was born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, on March 29, 1825. He became interested in the Christian ministry as a boy, joining the church at 14 years of age and became active in missionary work. At 18, he was authorized to preach under ministerial direction. Due to difficulties with his voice, he studied medicine and upon graduation from medical school became a medical and educational missionary in China. Wiley was elected bishop in 1864 and organized a Methodist conference in Japan. Bishop Wiley died on November 22, 1884 in his beloved China.

Winston-Salem State University

Winston-Salem State University was founded as Slater Industrial Academy on September 28, 1892. It began in a one-room frame structure with 25 pupils and one teacher. In 1895 the school was recognized by the State of North Carolina and in 1899 it was chartered by the state as Slater Industrial and State Normal School.

In 1925, the General Assembly of North Carolina recognized the school's curriculum above high school, changed its name to Winston-Salem Teachers College and empowered it under authority of the State Board of Education to confer appropriate degrees. Winston-Salem Teachers College thus became the first black institution in the nation to grant degrees for teaching in the elementary grades.

The School of Nursing was established in 1953 and awards graduates the bachelor of science degree. In 1963 the North Carolina General Assembly authorized changing the name from Winston-Salem Teachers College to Winston-Salem State College. A statute designating Winston-Salem State College as Winston-Salem State University received legislative approval in 1969. On October 30, 1971, the General Assembly reorganized higher education in North Carolina. On July 1, 1972, Winston-Salem State University became one of 16 constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina subject to the control of a Board of Governors.

Xavier University of Louisiana

Katharine Drexel was born into great wealth in Philadelphia in 1858. Her father was Francis Anthony Drexel, head of the Drexel Banking Company and her mother was Hannah Langstroth Drexel. Her mother died within weeks of Katharine’s birth leaving Francis with sole responsibility not only for Katharine but also for her older sister Elizabeth. A few years later, their father married Emma Bouvier. A younger sister, Louise, was added to the family 3 years later.

Katharine and her sisters were privileged not only by wealth, but also by faith and love. Their lives were permeated by the word and example of their parents who stressed the primacy of faith and the necessity of good stewardship.

Both of their parents died when all three girls were in their 20’s. They were devastated by both deaths but they were determined to carry on the legacy of their parents.

At the time of Francis’ death, the Drexel’s had amassed a $15 million fortune that today would probably be worth close to $300 million. In his will, Francis had put the money in trust and indicated that the income from the trust was to be equally divided by his daughters and their offspring, not their husbands. His intent was to ward off suitors who might be looking for money. If at the death of the third daughter, there were no surviving offspring, the principal of the trust was to be divided among a group of Philadelphia area charities that he designated.

In order to identify Xavier’s founding mission we need to return to the year 1915. That year, Archbishop Blenk of New Orleans approached Mother Katharine about the lack of Catholic higher education for African Americans. With the guidance of the Josephites, Archbishop Blenk was able to offer a plan: Southern University that had been located uptown on Magazine St. in New Orleans had been moved to Baton Rouge in 1912 due to pressure from White neighbors. Their abandoned building which was well suited to higher education was about to be auctioned to the highest bidder.

After prayer, consultation and a personal visit to see the property, Mother Katharine purchased the building and surrounding property through a third party. Old Southern—became St. Francis Xavier, named after a great missionary.

Xavier flourished from the beginning. By 1925 a Teachers College and College of Arts and Sciences had been established and by 1927 a College of Pharmacy had been added. As the college thrived and the high school also expanded, it became clear that additional space was needed. Property on Washington and Pine was purchased in 1929 and the new buildings were dedicated in 1932.

February Twenty-Seven...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 27, 2019 at 6:00am

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Evelyn Wright - Founder of Voorhees College

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Education, Human Rights, Women's Rights

Virginia State University

Virginia State University was founded on March 6, 1882, when the legislature passed a bill to charter the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. The bill was sponsored by Delegate Alfred W. Harris, a Black attorney whose offices were in Petersburg, but lived in and represented Dinwiddie County in the General Assembly.

Fact

The first person to bear the title of president, John Mercer Langston, was a well-known African-American of his day. Until 1992, he was the only African-American elected to the United States Congress from Virginia (elected in 1888); and he was the great-uncle of the famed writer Langston Hughes.

Virginia Union University

Researched by Raymond Hylton, Professor of History

Virginia Union University - History Header

Our mission at Virginia Union University was first put into operation shortly after April 3, 1865, the date when Richmond, Virginia was liberated by troops of the United States Army of the James. It was then that representatives from our founding organization, the American Baptist Home Mission Society, came to the former Confederate capital as teachers and missionaries. In that same month, eleven teachers were holding classes for former slaves at two missions in the city. By November 1865 the Mission Society had established, and was officially holding classes for, Richmond Theological School for Freedmen, one of the four institutions forming the “Union” that gives our University its name. Even though the Civil War had ended and that same year the 13th Amendment to the Constitution officially abolished slavery, many trials still lay ahead. It became more and more certain that freedom would not, of itself, be enough. It could not sufficiently address the problems of a large, newly-emancipated population that had been systematically kept down and denied training skills, opportunities, and even literacy itself. Some slaves had been severely punished for even trying to read the Bible.

Fortunately, there were many who cared, and who would try to impart the education and skills necessary for the full enjoyment of freedom and citizenship, to the newly-freed population. One such group of concerned individuals were the members of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS). They proposed a “National Theological Institute” designed primarily at providing education and training for African-Americans to enter into the Baptist ministry; and soon this mission would expand into offering courses and programs at college, high school and even preparatory levels, to both men and women.

In 1865, following the surrender of the Confederacy, branches of the “National Theological Institute” were set up in Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia. The Washington institution received a $1,500 grant from the Freedman’s Bureau and met at various locations including: Judiciary Square; “I” Street; Louisiana Avenue and, finally, Meridian Hill. The school became known as Wayland Seminary; and it acquired a sterling reputation under the direction of its president, Dr. George Mellen Prentiss King. Dr. King administered Wayland for thirty years (1867-97) and stayed on as a professor for twenty additional years at both Wayland and at Virginia Union University. The King Gate which currently faces Lombardy Street and is situated between Ellison Hall and the Baptist Memorial Building was named in his honor shortly before he died in 1917. Among the notable students to grace Wayland’s halls were: Dr. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. the famous pastor of New York’s Abyssinian Baptist Church; Dr. Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee University and author of Up From Slavery; Reverend Harvey Johnson of Baltimore, Maryland – pastor and early civil rights activist; Kate Drumgoold, author of A Slave Girl’s Story: Being an account of Kate Drumgoold (1898); Henry Vinton Plummer, Civil War Naval combat hero and U.S. Army Chaplain to the “Buffalo Soldiers”; and Albert L. Cralle, inventor of the ice-cream scoop.

Virginia University of Lynchburg

Virginia Seminary and College was organized in May 1886 during the 19th annual session of the Virginia Baptist State Convention at the First Baptist Church in Lexington, Va. The Rev. P.F. Morris, pastor of Court Street Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., offered the resolution that authorized the establishment of the institution. Just 21 years out of slavery, African American Baptist leaders founded Lynchburg’s oldest institution of higher education for men and women to meet the growing demands of our community for better-educated and trained ministers, missionaries, and public school teachers.

In July 1886, lawyer James H. Hayes of Richmond was appointed to obtain a charter for the school. During the 1888 session of the Virginia Baptist State Convention, the location of the school in Lynchburg, the plans and specifications for the first brick building, the letting of the contract for the erection of the building and the charter were approved. The cornerstone of the first building was laid in July 1888. The school was opened on Jan. 18, 1890, by Professor R. P. Armstead with an enrollment of 33 students.

Voorhees College

Inspiration, determination, imagination, faith. All four have been pillar principles in Voorhees College's century-long history of changing minds and changing lives.

That history started with Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, who at 23 was only a little older than today's Voorhees students when she came to Bamberg County. A native of Georgia, Wright had found her inspiration while studying at Booker T. Washington's famed Tuskegee Institute. She said time at Tuskegee gave her a mission in life: being “the same type of woman as Mr. Washington was of a man." Knowing the importance of education, she moved to Denmark and started the first of several schools in the rural area She survived threats, attacks and arson.

Wright went back to Tuskegee to finish her degree before returning to South Carolina to try again. Undeterred and envisioning a better future for blacks through education, she founded Denmark Industrial School in 1897, modeling it after Tuskegee. New Jersey philanthropist Ralph Voorhees and his wife donated $5,000 to buy the land and build the first building, allowing the school to open in 1902 with Wright as principal. It was the only high school for blacks in the area.

West Virginia State University

Beginning of West Virginia State University

Acts of the Legislature of West Virginia at its Twentieth Regular Session, commencing January 14, 1891.

CHAPTER LXV.

AN ACT accepting the provisions of the act of congress approved August thirtieth, eighteen hundred and ninety, entitled "An act to apply a portion of the proceeds of the public lands to the more complete endowment and support of the colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts, established under the provisions of an act of congress approved July second, eight hundred and sixty-two," and providing for the apportionment of said endowment according to the provisions of said act. [Passed March 4, 1891.]