Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

We, Terrans...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 15, 2018 at 5:42am

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics, Star Trek

Yesterday at a high school in Parkland, Florida was the 18th shooting in 2018. It's only been 45 days. There were 345 mass shootings in 2017 alone. We've been chugging along since January 1. This will be remembered as a Valentine's Day massacre.

My sister-in-law and nephew live near this neighborhood. She describes it as affluent, well-off enough for someone to purchase an AR-15 and ammunition. We'll get the obligatory "thoughts and prayers" that will amount to legislatively, nothing. Pew Research reports most gun owners happen to be white and male, many paranoid, delusional and prepping for a race war. Many work with a fellow classmate, a high-level GS engineer. They tell him this, my friend relays to me...another African American male...to his FACE. I, like him, believe them at least in as far as his safety.

The gun industry is failing under their preferred president*, who himself probably doesn't own a single firearm. Remington ironically has filed for bankruptcy, since their business model hinges on making the handful of gun enthusiasts nervous about the "gov-mint coming to take your guns" and "jackbooted thugs" (whatever that means). Just 3% of American citizens own 133 million guns. This is the business model, warped though it is. We are all cannon fodder.

"Terran strength is born out of pure necessity. Because they live in constant fear, always looking for the next knife aimed at their back. Their strength is painted rust. It's a facade."

– Michael Burnham, 2256 ("Despite Yourself")

The Terran Empire was a repressive interstellar government dominated by the Terrans from Earth in the mirror universe. The Empire ruled by terror, its Imperial Starfleet acting as its iron fist. In Starfleet, officers promoted themselves by killing superiors that did not follow the rules of the Empire. Torture was a common form of interrogation. (ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly"; TOS: "Mirror, Mirror")

The precise historical origin of the Empire is a subject of much debate and speculation among fans. If the opening credits of the two Enterprise mirror universe episodes are any indication, the time of the Empire's formation can be pushed back at least to the age of sail (roughly 1571 - 1862 in our universe).

A scene cut from ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly" had Archer invoking the blessings of "the gods", hinting that the Empire may be a continuation of or successor to the Roman Empire. Marlena Moreau mentioning Kirk becoming a "Caesar" would add support to this notion, as may the fact that "Terra" is the Latin word for "Earth".

The salute used by officers (closing the fist over the heart and then extending the arm in front, saying, "Long live the Empire") is also reminiscent of the Roman soldiers' and gladiators' salute to Caesar.

Indirect support for the idea that the Empire had a relatively "ancient" origin may be found in a statement made by the mirror Phlox in "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II". In that episode, he revealed that, although he had found significant differences between the great historical works of literature in the mirror universe and those of the prime universe, he had discovered an exception in Shakespeare, Phlox expressing that the works of Shakespeare were "equally grim in both universes."

Additionally, the mirror Philippa Georgiou in the Star Trek: Discovery episode "Vaulting Ambition" stated that the ideals of equality, freedom, and compassion were "delusions Terrans shed millenia ago."

Memory Alpha: Terran Empire

Insightful as ever, Trek peered through the facade of our existence with a clearly focused lens, like a magnifier in sunlight. The original Star Trek, Enterprise, Deep Space 9 and Discovery had their swings at plot lines in the mirror replicate of our supposedly civilized home. When Gene Roddenberry envisioned the mirror universe, it was through a transporter accident that Kirk, "Bones," Uhura and Scotty ended up in a universe to diametrically opposite of what they'd left. The Federation was all about inclusion and equality; the Terran Empire was all about fascism and fear. Change the Terran motto in the emblem above from "force" to "fear" and it encapsulates the zeitgeist we're being driven to by every obfuscatory statement and tweet.

Instead of thinking "that's them," we may want to look more closely in our own mirror, after a treatment of Windex...this isn't them at some mythical "over there."

This...

is...

US!

Frederick Douglass...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 14, 2018 at 6:05am

Image Source: Wikiquote "Once you have learned to read you will forever be free." "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." More at Brainyquote.com

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

Originally posted as "The Meaning..." #P4TC, July 5, 2015.

Today is Valentine's Day and Frederick Douglass's 200th birthday, or at least the day he assigned for himself. One of my favorite quotes by him (that I use) is "The soul that is within me, no man can degrade."

Frederick Douglass was known well for being an escaped slave, committed republican (at that time in our history, the progressive party) and abolitionist. He was a staunch advocate of equality (an early one for women) and education, seeing his own personal emancipation centered on something slaves were banned from doing: reading. His former master chastised his wife, saying teaching Frederick how to read would "ruin him" and make him unfit for the peculiar institution. He couldn't have agreed more.

In his uniquely bellicose manner, Mr. Douglass tackles this in a long soliloquy given July 5, 1852 in Rochester, NY. I have thought of Charleston, South Carolina and how the narrative of our nation had been determined by a defeated foe to the point of redefining the narrative and main rationale (if you can call it that) behind the Civil War: the continued indentured servitude of a kidnapped people in perpetuity. In light of the debate sparked by the assassination of nine innocents in Mother Emanuel AME, and the symbol the terrorist so revered; the possibility on that symbol's removal in the bloody aftermath, I give you Frederick Douglass' apropos speech on its 163rd anniversary in excerpt, read by the accomplished actor and voice of Darth Vader, James Earl Jones.

Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens:

He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.

The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July Oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for me. It is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall seems to free me from embarrassment.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable-and the difficulties to he overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence I will proceed to lay them before you.

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. l am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.-Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

History is a Weapon: The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, Frederick Douglass

Related link: What the Civil War Can Teach us About Patriotism, Jarret Ruminski, PhD Historian, "That Devil History" blog

Atomically Precise Manufacturing...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 14, 2018 at 5:58am

Credit: University of Texas at Dallas

Topics: Instrumentation, Modern Physics, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Scanning Tunneling Microscopy

A University of Texas at Dallas graduate student, his advisor and industry collaborators believe they have addressed a long-standing problem troubling scientists and engineers for more than 35 years: How to prevent the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope from crashing into the surface of a material during imaging or lithography.

Details of the group's solution appeared in the January issue of the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, which is published by the American Institute of Physics.

Scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs) operate in an ultra-high vacuum, bringing a fine-tipped probe with a single atom at its apex very close to the surface of a sample. When voltage is applied to the surface, electrons can jump or tunnel across the gap between the tip and sample.

"Think of it as a needle that is very sharp, atomically sharp," said Farid Tajaddodianfar, a mechanical engineering graduate student in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. "The microscope is like a robotic arm, able to reach atoms on the sample surface and manipulate them."

The problem is, sometimes the tungsten tip crashes into the sample. If it physically touches the sample surface, it may inadvertently rearrange the atoms or create a "crater," which could damage the sample. Such a "tip crash" often forces operators to replace the tip many times, forfeiting valuable time.

Dr. John Randall is an adjunct professor at UT Dallas and president of Zyvex Labs, a Richardson, Texas-based nanotechnology company specializing in developing tools and products that fabricate structures atom by atom. Zyvex reached out to Dr. Reza Moheimani, a professor of mechanical engineering, to help address STMs' tip crash problem. Moheimani's endowed chair was a gift from Zyvex founder James Von Ehr MS'81, who was honored as a distinguished UTD alumnus in 2004.

"What they're trying to do is help bring atomically precise manufacturing into reality," said Randall, who co-authored the article with Tajaddodianfar, Moheimani and Zyvex Labs' James Owens. "This is considered the future of nanotechnology, and it is extremely important work."

Microscopy breakthrough paves the way for atomically precise manufacturing, The University of Texas at Dallas

Greensboro Medical Society...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 13, 2018 at 7:37am

Image Source: Simkins et al vs. Cone

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

The scholarship gala for the Greensboro Medical Society used as its theme Egypt, specifically Imhotep, the original father of medicine, despite Hippocrates holding that distinction in the west. The presentation was to honor Dr. Otis E. Tillman, Sr., who delivered babies at then segregated hospitals in High Point, Greensboro and Winston-Salem. It was with chills that I had an epiphany: this gentle giant of medicine, who had himself endured many indignities of racism and segregation, may have delivered me at Kate Bitting Reynolds Hospital. It was possible. I didn't ask, but it did send chills to hear his clear enunciation, mental acuity and stirring story. I also met my new dentist, who I'll likely be under his care as of this posting. It was a wondrous evening.

The Greensboro Medical Society (GMS) was formed several years after the opening of L. Richardson Memorial Hospital which opened on May 4, 1927. Early accounts indicate that the society was not active during the late 1920's and 1930's. In the mid 1940's; however, the GMS was re-activated. During this time, Drs. G.H. Evans, C.C. Stewart, J.P. Sebastian, J.C. Waddy, J.R. Hawkins, W.J. Hughes, Sr., G.C. Simkins, Sr., B.W. Barnes, M.S. Jenkins, W. Murrow, and Hargraves were the physicians, dentists and pharmacists who composed the Society and staffed L. Richardson Hospital. All members were also affiliated with the Old North State Society and National Medical Association. They came together during this time for the purpose of education, fellowship, networking and socialization.

Because of the policy of segregation, which was prevalent in America during this time, these doctors were denied staff privileges at the majority hospitals and membership in the mainstream majority health professional organizations. These included the American Medical Association, American Dental Association and their regional and local affiliates. The Greensboro Medical Society therefore served as an outlet to temper the ill-effects of the isolation of these times.

Simkins et al vs. Cone

After World War II, leaders in the black community were determined to improve health care for black persons by ending discrimination in hospital policies and practices. Leaders of professional organizations developed a collaborative strategy that involved the court system, federal legislation, and research and education of the public and health professionals to integrate the hospital system rather than to expand the existing separate-but-equal system. Efforts culminated in the case of Simkins v Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital; this case became the landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court and led to the elimination of segregated health care.

Greensboro Medical Society, Our History

Imhotep...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 13, 2018 at 7:33am

Imhotep, The Encyclopedia Britannica online

Topics: Africa, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science

Alternative Title: Imouthes

Imhotep, Greek Imouthes, (born 27th century BCE, Memphis, Egypt), vizier, sage, architect, astrologer, and chief minister to Djoser (reigned 2630–2611 BCE), the second king of Egypt’s third dynasty, who was later worshiped as the god of medicine in Egypt and in Greece, where he was identified with the Greek god of medicine, Asclepius. He is considered to have been the architect of the step pyramid built at the necropolis of Ṣaqqārah in the city of Memphis. The oldest extant monument of hewn stone known to the world, the pyramid consists of six steps and attains a height of 200 feet (61 metres).

Step pyramid, Ṣaqqārah necropolis, Memphis, Encyclopedia Britannica

Imhotep’s high standing in Djoser’s court is affirmed by an inscription bearing his name on a statue of Djoser found at the site of the Ṣaqqārah pyramid. The inscription lists a variety of titles, including chief of the sculptors and chief of the seers. Although no contemporary account has been found that refers to Imhotep as a practicing physician, ancient documents illustrating Egyptian society and medicine during the Old Kingdom (c. 2575– c. 2130 BCE) show that the chief magician of the pharaoh’s court also frequently served as the nation’s chief physician. Imhotep’s reputation as the reigning genius of the time, his position in the court, his training as a scribe, and his becoming known as a medical demigod only 100 years after his death are strong indications that he must have been a physician of considerable skill.

Imhotep, written by the editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica

Dr. Treena Livingston Arinzeh...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 12, 2018 at 5:58am

Treena Livingston Arinzeh (Photo: Jerry Jack)

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

The Biomedical Engineer

Treena Livingston Arinzeh, Ph. D.

Associate Professor

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Armed with a master’s in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, Treena Livingston Arinzeh was the first to demonstrate, in 2003, that scientists can implant donor stem cells derived from the bone marrow of adults to form functional, viable bone tissue that is not rejected by the body.

Replacing bone tissue using donor stem cells has far-reaching applications. For one, patients may not need to undergo immunosuppression therapy, which can cause infection, osteoporosis, and damage to the kidney, liver, or pancreas. In addition, her research has led to clinical methods to induce bone repair of diabetics and others who have bone injuries. As a result of her findings, in 2004 President George W. Bush presented her with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the nation’s highest scientific honor. Her research is now mimicked in bone marrow transplant procedures across the country.

Arinzeh, now an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, says that women make up 50% of undergraduates in biomedical engineering but that there aren’t enough African Americans pursuing careers in her area. She says students must be engaged by mentors, and parents need to get them involved in extracurricular activities. “I think they don’t see enough of us that look like them so they can identify with that career as something they can actually do,â€ says Arinzeh, who invites 40 to 50 underrepresented high school students to her lab each summer, through the Project Seeds program, sponsored by the American Chemical Society.

Dr. Treena Livingston Arinzeh, Marcia Wade Talbert, Black Enterprise: Women in STEM

ReCell EV Batteries...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 12, 2018 at 5:53am

Add caption

Topics: Alternative Energy, Green Energy, Green Tech, Research

A novel model developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory allows industry, the Department and others to gauge the impact of recycling batteries in electric vehicles. It could further energize this market.

“Argonne has a long track record of expertise in battery research and development, and now we have added the ability to examine every step along the way, from manufacturing to recycling,” said Argonne’s Jeff Spangenberger, the project leader.

From cathodes to anodes and electrolytes, Argonne’s understanding of batteries, combined with ReCell, a closed-loop battery recycling model, offers preliminary estimates of total costs as well as environmental impacts such as carbon dioxide emissions. The model breaks down each process from when a battery leaves the factory to when it is recycled.

Argonne’s ReCell model can provide information to manufacturers up front, so those manufacturers can determine life cycle costs with precision and provide batteries to consumers with minimal environmental and economic impacts. Argonne’s researchers have designed ReCell to be versatile and adapt to the challenges that recycling of lithium ion batteries present, such as differing battery chemistries and formats.

Closing the loop on battery recycling, Karen Ehlers, Argonne National Laboratory

Ms. Lisette Titre...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 9, 2018 at 6:25am

Lisette Titre (Photo: Cindy Charles)

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

The Computer Animator

Lisette Titre

Senior Character & Special Effects Artist

EA (Electronic Arts)

ACG artist and computer animator Lisette Titre has contributed to some of EA’s highest profile games, including Tiger Woods Golf for Nintendo’s Wii, The Simpsons, and Dante’s Inferno.

As a character modeler, Titre takes data from scanned images of characters or real-life individuals and reworks the information to build a 3-D digital sculpture. After the character’s digital skeleton is built, she takes the skeletons and applies computer modeling controls so the fingers will curl, the legs will bend, and the character moves with fluidity.

Titre, who is often the only animator working in-house on her projects, also manages a team of outsourced artists in China, Australia, and Canada. Each team can consist of five to 20 people who work on game titles for as little as one year to as long as four years.

Ms. Lisette Titre, Marcia Wade Talbert, Black Enterprise: Women in STEM

By the Numbers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 9, 2018 at 6:18am

Jedi Master Yoda. Quote for the image below.

Topics: Commentary, Civics, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Star Wars

July 27, 2009, Wikipedia:

Orly Taitz+ (born August 30, 1960)[8] is a Moldovan-American political conspiracy theorist. A dentist, lawyer,[9] and former real estate agent,[10][11] Taitz was a figure in the "birther" movement, which promoted the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen eligible to serve as President of the United States. Taitz also promotes a number of other conspiracy theories both related and unrelated to Obama. Taitz has initiated a number of lawsuits on behalf of the "birther" movement; all were dismissed by the courts, and on one occasion Taitz was ordered to pay $20,000 as a sanction for misconduct in filing frivolous claims. Taitz has unsuccessfully run for statewide office in California three times.

Taitz alleges that President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as President. She claims he was born in Kenya and that he falsified his Selective Service papers and his application to the Illinois bar.[22] "I believe [Obama] is the most dangerous thing one can imagine, in that he represents radical communism and radical Islam: He was born and raised in radical Islam, all of his associations are with radical Islam, and he was groomed in the environment of the dirty Chicago mafia. Can there be anything scarier than that?" [1]

April 4, 2011, Politico:

Birtherism is the latest and most enduring version of a theory in search of facts.

The original smear against Obama was that he was a crypto-Muslim, floated in 2004 by perennial Illinois political candidate and serial litigant Andy Martin. Other related versions of this theory alleged that Obama was educated in an Indonesian “madrassa” or steeped in Islamist ideology from a young age, and the theories began to spread virally after Obama appeared on the national stage – to the casual observer, from nowhere – with his early 2007 presidential campaign announcement.

All through that year, the Obama campaign – with the affirmation of most leaders of both parties – aggressively battled that smear by emphasizing his Christian faith. Obama’s controversial but emphatically Christian pastor emerged as a campaign issue and the belief that he was a Muslim seemed to lose traction.

Then, as Obama marched toward the presidency, a new suggestion emerged: That he was not eligible to serve.

That theory first emerged in the spring of 2008, as Clinton supporters circulated an anonymous email questioning Obama’s citizenship.

“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth,” asserted one chain email that surfaced on the urban legend site Snopes.com in April 2008. [2]

February 14, 2014, Outside the Beltway:

While the American public as a whole has a largely negative view of both Vladmir Putin and Russia as a whole, there is a segment of the American public that has, over the past several years developed an oddly positive opinion of a nation that Mitt Romney, to the cheers of many on the right, called our biggest geopolitical rival, and a man who was once a top agent in the KGB. What’s odd is that these cheers are not coming from the left side of the political aisle as they might have in the 1930s, but from the right. Back in August, I observed that people such as Pat Buchanan and Rod Dreher have been heaping praise on Putin for things such as the anti-gay “propaganda” laws that he push through the Russian legislature and compared him positively to President Obama and what seems to be the new version of Buchanan’s “culture war” argument from the 1992 Presidential campaign. In December, Buchanan and Dreher were back with more praise for the Russian President and his authoritarian, anti-equality, and allegedly “pro-Christian” policies. [3]

October 24, 2016, New Republic:

Public-opinion polling shows that Trump’s low opinion of American elections has practically become Republican Party orthodoxy. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, Republicans have an “unprecedented” level of “concern and mistrust in the system.” Roughly 70 percent of Republican voters believe that if Hillary Clinton wins the election, it’ll be due to fraud. In both this poll and an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, only half of Republicans say they’d accept a Clinton victory. (In the latter poll, by contrast, 82 percent of Democrats said they would accept a Trump victory.)

This suspicious Republican electorate is joined by growing ranks of conservative politicians, pundits, and intellectuals. They’re all increasingly willing to say that the existing American political system is hopelessly flawed and needs to be rolled back to the days before blacks and women could vote. On the most obvious level, this can be seen in moves by Republican governors all over America to make voting more difficult, through stringent voting ID laws, new hurdles to registration, and the curtailment of early-voting options. Equally significant has been the gutting of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act by conservative Supreme Court justices in the 2013 Shelby Country v. Holder ruling.

But these overt forms of voting suppression are merely the most visible manifestations of a larger questioning of democracy on the political right. Trump’s anti-democratic rhetoric—and the eagerness of so many good, white patriotic Americans to cheer it and believe it—is a symptom of the larger trend on the political right toward doubting the legitimacy of the American system. The question we need to be asking isn’t, “Why is Trump being such a jerk?” It’s, “Why is the American Right giving up on democracy?” [4]

One interesting side bar: Orly Taitz+ - the original birther conspiracy theorist before our erstwhile Putin-puppet, Manchurian candidate president* took up the mantle - like two of his three serial marriages is herself an immigrant.

In the 1994 book "Black Labor, White Wealth" by Dr. Claude Anderson, the 1850 census found the slave population coming to parity with the majority white population. Up to that point, "white" had a specificity and excluded certain European countries. Because that parity - even for a slave population - meant an increase in power, the definition of that artificial demarcation got "liberal." To maintain superior numbers, the US opened the floodgates. Czechs, Italians, Jews and Poles would eventually be considered a part of the majority, as if their exclusion had never occurred. It's always been a numbers game.

The immigration policies regarding LEGAL immigration ala Stephen Miller would delay the date white Americans become a numerical minority by five years. It moved from originally 2050 to 2042; it had recently shifted by two years to 2044, apparently. The policies again, on legal immigration thus push it a year before the original 2050 date, which is a deliberate calculus, but it doesn't stop it. The specific targeting of a diverse diaspora is quite deliberate. Couple that with the fever pitched effort to suppress the votes of people of color, you have a naked exercise in white supremacy you can easily measure. It's been the nature of the nation from its genocidal (Native Americans) and kidnapping (African Americans) origins.

It's never been about Christian "family values," if the enabling of wife beaters that don't need security clearances attests to. Christian supremacy - according to the thesis of "The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism, and Religious Diversity in America" by Jeannine Hill Fletcher (a white theologian) is the bedrock on which this nation's bigoted behavior was founded on.

And now it has a voice: the personification of its calamitous zeitgeist: a true man of lawlessness. A need to look back to a pristine time of superiority. It clarifies opposition to people of color, deport any and all Hispanic/Latino immigrants (legal or not), label whole nations in the Caribbean and on the African continent s-house countries (as if "hole" was the insult); the LGBT (they biologically cannot make white babies, to paraphrase Steve King's ridiculous statement). It makes the rise of racist organizations - be they alt-right, birther, homophobic, KKK, Neo Nazi - have a consistent, base theme.

That theme is fear.

“Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate...hate leads to suffering.” Yoda, "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," May 6, 2014

1. Orly Taitz, Wikipedia

2. Birtherism: Where it all began, Ben Smith and Byron Tau, Politico

3. Explaining The Conservative Love Affair With Vladimir Putin: It’s All About Opposing Obama, Doug Mataconis, Outside the Beltway

4. The Right Is Giving Up on Democracy, Jeet Heer, New Republic

Dr. Tanya Moore...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 8, 2018 at 6:23am

Tanya Moore (Photo: Cindy Charles)

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

The Mathematician

Tanya Moore, Ph. D.

Youth Services Coordinator, 2020 Vision Projects

City of Berkley California’s Unified School District

Tanya Moore demonstrates that mathematicians can help divert social catastrophes. As the leader of the city-wide 2020 Vision Projects, launched in June 2010, Moore’s job is to help close the achievement gap between white, black, and Latino students in Berkeley, California, by 2020. She has a central role in designing the surveys, methodologies, and statistical indicators to be used for tracking student progress. After analyzing the data, she will help design and evaluate youth interventions and services across community agencies and city departments.

Moore’s concern with increasing educational achievement for minorities doesn’t end in Berkeley, where she received her Ph.D. in biostatistics. She also spearheads Infinite Possibilities, a national conference for women of color in all stages of mathematics–from high school students to post-docs and women in private industry. “I started it initially as a reunion because of the experiences I had at Spelman [College]. Now it has grown. It has created this wonderful community over the last few years.

Participants regularly write Moore about how Infinite Possibilities helped them feel less isolated in grad school. She understands their frustration firsthand. While working on a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins she received her share of intolerant comments. “People told me I would only pass qualifying exams because I was an African American woman and the school wanted to make their quota. I’d walk into a room and people would tell me I was in the wrong classroom. Sometimes a professor would say ‘Wow, you did better than we expected.’"

Dr. Tanya Moore, Marcia Wade Talbert, Black Enterprise: Women in STEM

Narges Mohammadi, Social Justice Warrior...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 8, 2018 at 6:00am

Image Source: APS link below

Topics: Civil Rights, Commentary, Human Rights, Diversity in Science, Women in Science

The title of the post originates from a pejorative. The initials "SJW" are meant as an insult to discourage a post on a topic like police brutality against a group (e.g. Black Lives Matter) as being too "politically correct." What is typically left out of the missive is the considerable amount of courage it takes to actually live the initials.

2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize Recipient

Narges Mohammadi

Citation:

"for her leadership in campaigning for peace, justice, and the abolition of the death penalty and for her unwavering efforts to promote the human rights and freedoms of the Iranian people, despite persecution that has forced her to suspend her scientific pursuits and endure lengthy incarceration."

Background:

Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian physicist, engineer, and human rights defender currently serving a 16-year sentence in Evin Prison (Tehran), was born in Zanjan in 1972. She majored in physics at Imam Khomeini University in Qazvin, where she became actively involved in promoting rights and social justice by founding a political student organization and publishing on issues related to women’s and students’ rights. After graduating, she worked both as an engineer with the Iran Engineering Inspection Corporation and as a journalist, highlighting issues related to gender equality. Ms. Mohammadi’s efforts to maintain a career in the sciences while speaking out about human rights abuses were unsuccessful. In 2009 she was dismissed from her position with the Engineering Inspection Corporation. The same year, she was arrested and incarcerated.

Ms. Mohammadi is known globally for her efforts to promote and protect the rights of women, prisoners of conscience, minority communities, and other vulnerable groups. She has also been deeply involved in efforts to promote free and fair elections and abolish the death penalty in her country. As spokesperson and vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), an organization founded in 2001 by Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi and other prominent Iranian lawyers, and closed by the government in 2008, Ms. Mohammadi helped to provide pro bono legal assistance to prisoners of conscience and monitor the human rights situation in Iran. She also served as president of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Peace in Iran, an organization dedicated to opposing military conflict and violence. Together with other human rights activists, she created the Women’s Civil Center, a body that defends the rights of women, political prisoners, and minorities. Her courageous actions in support of human rights have taken many forms, from protests before parliament concerning acid attacks on women to prison vigils with the families of individuals facing execution. Ms. Mohammadi is the recipient of the 2009 international Alexander Langer Award and the 2011 Per Anger Prize for human rights.

2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize Recipient, American Physical Society

"Andrei Sakharov - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 8 Feb 2018. < NobelPrize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1975/sakharov-facts.html >

Dr. Ashanti Johnson...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 7, 2018 at 12:52pm

Ashanti Johnson (Photo: Steve McAlister)

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

The Chemist

Ashanti Johnson, Ph. D.

Chemical Oceanographer/Geochemist

University of South Florida,

College of Marine Science

Studying soil and sedimentation of rivers, estuaries, and beaches, Ashanti Johnson’s work as an aquatic radiogeochemist was instrumental in decoding the environmental effects of potentially hazardous incidents throughout Puerto Rico.

Johnson can be found scouring the beaches of RincÃ³n, where a nuclear power plant operated until the 1970s, or collecting soil samples in Vieques, where depleted uranium residue remained for years following an artillery firing range run by the U.S. Navy. “These problems have been investigated very little," says Johnson. “It takes a lot of dedication and is really labor intensive. You get muddy, you get wet, and at the end of the day, you’re happy to have processed your samples."

Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in marine science and a Ph.D. in chemical oceanography from Texas A&M University. Her Ph.D. work helped assess whether nuclear waste released in the Arctic by the former Soviet Union migrated toward the Alaskan coastline. She also spent a short time working at Exxon as a geochemist before venturing back into teaching at Georgia Tech and Savannah State University.

Dr. Ashanti Johnson, Marcia Wade Talbert, Black Enterprise: Women in STEM

Flight of Falcons...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 7, 2018 at 12:47pm

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center, February 6, 2018. Credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Topics: Mars, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight

Earlier today, our sun gained a new satellite, courtesy of SpaceX’s first test launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket: A cherry-red Tesla Roadster once driven by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, blasting tunes from David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” with a spacesuit-clad “Star Man” dummy strapped in the driver’s seat. On the dashboard display as it hurtled into the void? “Don’t Panic,” the tagline from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Launched with an earth-shaking roar from Pad 39a at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida—the same launch site of the Apollo 11 lunar mission in 1969 and the first space shuttle flight in 1981—the Roadster was boosted onto an interplanetary trajectory that takes it looping between the orbital vicinities of Earth and of Mars. It is neither the first car nor even the first electric model ever launched into space (the Apollo-era lunar rovers take both of those prizes). But it is certainly the fastest, approaching a speed of 12 kilometers per second relative to Earth when it separated from the Falcon Heavy’s payload fairing en route to deep space.

The big news here, though, isn’t actually the Falcon Heavy’s eccentric payload, but rather the mere fact that this behemoth of a rocket exists and is on the verge of regular operations. Musk, for his part, pegged the chances of success at only 50/50, where “success” was defined as the rocket merely flying high enough to clear the launch pad before exploding. In actuality, the rocket performed nearly flawlessly.

Elon Musk Does it Again, Lee Billings, Scientific American

Dr. Aprille J. Ericsson...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 6, 2018 at 7:54pm

Dr. Aprille J. Ericsson, NASA, image source link below

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

The Aerospace Engineer
Aprille J. Ericsson, Ph.D.
Deputy Instrument Manager
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

As the deputy instrument manager for the ATLAS Instrument team at NASA, Aprille J. Ericsson leads development of an instrument to house satellite-based lasers used to measure the topography of ice sheets from space in order to measure global climate changes.

Ericsson, who holds a master’s of engineering and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in aerospace from Howard University and who earned a bachelor’s of science in aeronautical/astronautical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was previously one of the lead engineers on the concept study report for GEMS, or the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer. The unmanned observatory, which is scheduled to launch no later than April 2014, will be the first to measure polarized X-rays to study supermassive black holes and magnetars. Ericsson's work was influential in winning $105 million of funding for the project in 2009.

Ericsson was also the project engineer for LOLA, a lunar orbiter laser altimeter, which created an unprecedented topographic map of the moon’s landscape in late 2009.

“High school students need to be encouraged to do summer programs. If they have an interest in engineering or science they need to apply at field centers at NASA and NOAA so they get a feel for what they want to do," says Ericsson, who did the same at a young age. “It’s really important to have [hands-on lab] exposure as early as freshman and sophomore year. They perform better with their course work because they learn in an applied atmosphere."

Dr. Aprille J. Ericsson, Marcia Wade Talbert, Black Enterprise: Women in STEM

Coordinated Dance...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 6, 2018 at 7:51pm

Image source: Article link below

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Dark Matter

Abstract

The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are each surrounded by a thin plane of satellite dwarf galaxies that may be corotating. Cosmological simulations predict that most satellite galaxy systems are close to isotropic with random motions, so those two well-studied systems are often interpreted as rare statistical outliers. We test this assumption using the kinematics of satellite galaxies around the Centaurus A galaxy. Our statistical analysis reveals evidence for corotation in a narrow plane: Of the 16 Centaurus A satellites with kinematic data, 14 follow a coherent velocity pattern aligned with the long axis of their spatial distribution. In standard cosmological simulations, less than 0.5% of Centaurus A–like systems show such behavior. Corotating satellite systems may be common in the universe, challenging small-scale structure formation in the prevailing cosmological paradigm.

A whirling plane of satellite galaxies around Centaurus A challenges cold dark matter cosmology Müller et al, Science Magazine

Ella Tyree...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2018 at 8:34am

Ella Tyree image source: Cliotropic (link below)

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

Spelman graduate Ella Tyree worked near Chicago, where she did animal research "to determine the effects of radiation on humans." She managed the lab-animal farm for Argonne National Laboratories before being promoted to a research position. Source: "Atom Scientists'', Ebony, September 1949, 26.

There are some excellent write ups about her. Two of them are in "Related links" below.

Shane Landrum, historian and technologist has a blog called "Cliotropic." Shane's Master's thesis was titled “‘In Los Alamos, I feel like I’m a real citizen’: Black atomic scientists, education, and citizenship, 1945-1960.” The title literally speaks volumes on its own with little commentary. Part of the dearth of African American STEM talent simply boils down to access and exposure. There's also a definite image the American consumer is "sold" of what constitutes the authentic "African/Black American experience." Sports and hoodlum is acceptable; scientists and engineers only in small quantities. That is socially engineered by way of standardized tests, employment bias, negative stereotypes and the unequal application of the American judicial system, specifically the need to fill private prisons with bodies post middle passage, once piled in ships; now cell blocks.

It is repeated formulaic in media and omitted history. If life imitates art, then specifically for us, it's often blaxploitation. "Our place" is drilled into us, and the stratification of society into that part of humanity numerically in the majority in the United States (for now, at least until 2042). For the owners of society that inequality doesn't affect in their pristine, well-guarded enclaves, intentionally-stoked racial strife is a useful cudgel to wield on bewildered herds*.

I'll have more to say about this as we get closer to the premier of Black Panther.

In the meantime, here's the URL to the Facebook group I started for it. Feel free to join us. I have my T-shirt and dashiki. I sadly can only where one to the premiere.

The bewildered herd* is a problem. We've got to prevent their roar and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Super bowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops" [or, #MAGA - my add] You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they’re properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they’re not competent to think. Therefore it’s important to distract them and marginalize them. Noam Chomsky, "Media Control" (2002), page 27, more at the link.

Muon Magnetic Moment...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2018 at 8:30am

The g-2 magnet arrives at Fermilab to be installed in the Muon g-2 experiment (Courtesy: Fermilab)

Topics: Modern Physics, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics

Physicists in Japan say they have a solution to a problem that has puzzled particle physicists for nearly two decades – the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon.

Measurements made over several years at the at the g-2 experiment at the US’s Brookhaven National Laboratory suggest that the muon magnetic moment is significantly larger than predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. After careful analysis of data related to the decay of the muon to an electron, the statistical significance of this discrepancy is at 3.6σ – which means that it is extremely unlikely to be a fluke.

One possible explanation is that particles not described by the Standard Model are involved in the muon decay, and their presence affects the measured value of the muon magnetic moment. Finding evidence for such particles would be a colossal achievement, which is why the new Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab is gathering data this year.

Now, however, Takahiro Morishima of Nagoya University and Toshifumi Futamase of Kyoto Sangyo University have come up with an alternative explanation of the anomaly. In three preprints uploaded to the arXiv server, the duo calculate that effects due the curvature of space-time could result in an increase in the measured value of the magnetic moment. This effect of general relativity is related to the gravitational field of the Earth.

Has the muon magnetic moment mystery been solved? Hamish Johnston, Physics World

Katherine Johnson...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 2, 2018 at 9:14am

Portrait of Katherine Johnson Credits: NASA

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

Date of Birth: August 26, 1918 Hometown: White Sulphur Springs, WV Education: B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937 Hired by NACA: June 1953 Retired from NASA: 1986 Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson

Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools is something that many people would consider one of their life’s most notable moments, but it’s just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson’s long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918, Katherine Johnson’s intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By thirteen, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At eighteen, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school’s math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD in Mathematics. Katherine graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia.

When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia State’s president Dr. John W. Davis selected Katherine and two male students as the first black students to be offered spots at the state’s flagship school, West Virginia University. Katherine left her teaching job, and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her husband. She returned to teaching when her three daughters got older, but it wasn’t until 1952 that a relative told her about open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine and her husband, James Goble, decided to move the family to Newport News to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953. Just two weeks into Katherine’s tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherine’s temporary position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight test, and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.

Katherine Johnson Biography, NASA

Sources and Methods...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 2, 2018 at 9:11am

Image Source: Debate dot org

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics

Abstract from Oxford Handbooks:

“Sources and methods” is a term used to describe the practice of intelligence collection and analysis. Intelligence sources and the nature of information obtained vary. Intelligence sources may include information obtained from espionage, images obtained by satellites, intercepted communications, and publicly available media reporting. The nature of information may vary from purloined documents to the “signature” of ship's radar. The term methods, which is synonymous with tradecraft, pertains to the techniques used by operations officers and analysts to carry out their duties. Methods may include social-science methodologies, computer-based analytic tools, maintaining secretive communications and so on. Sources and methods of intelligence agencies are heavily guarded because it comprise of the ways the information is collected and analyzed can give opponents opportunity to assess the capabilities and interests of their enemy. Intelligence agencies surround their sources and methods in a cloak of secrecy because they are significant in the success of ongoing and future operations and analysis. In the advent of globalization, the barriers are dissolved between foreign and domestic violence activities including the way local and national law enforcement and intelligence agencies work. Distinctions between private and public interests and entities are also blurred as activities in the public and private sphere interact to shape domestic and international threats. Apart from globalization, the advent of information revolution also changed the practice and study of intelligence. Policymakers, analysts, and scholars are now confronted with a torrent of data and information as well as the virtual realities of “cyberspace”. New collective workspaces which are empowered by the advancement in communication and computer technologies are also creating new opportunities for collaboration. This article discusses three emerging topics in the study and practice of intelligence in such a way to illustrate the emerging sources and methods of intelligence studies. These new emerging topics are: the intelligence for homeland security, the concept of collective intelligence, and the application of intelligence and warning methodologies to mitigate risk.

We can no longer call them the party of "family values." That title went out the window with the Birther Movement cum Orly Tate cum the 45th occupant-Manchurian-candidate of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That title went when quite a few of them PROUDLY displayed a bumper sticker quoting Psalms 109: "8 Let his days be few; [and] let another take his office. 9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. 10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek [their bread] also out of their desolate places." about the p-grabber's black predecessor. That title went with justifying an avalanche of lies that impugns the so-called "faith" of white evangelicals, from the p-grabbing serial adulterer that has his third wife pissed with him at the state of disunion because he paid off a porn star to hide their secret backgammon games! Which is kind of ironic, since she was his affair on his second wife, and his SECOND wife was his affair on his first wife! Talk about not getting-a-clue. Kind of makes you NOT stand on the applause line "family and faith." There's only so much felgercarb even a possibly illegal Slovenian can take. From his warm-up act at the Vice President Debate to the Olympic-level obfuscations we've endured since January 20, 2017, Pence is the physical embodiment of John 8:44. Millennials may be lost for generations for this laid-bare, abject hypocrisy.

We can thoroughly jettison national security as a bona fide of republicanism. It was way before changing the republican platform in 2016. The same political party that went after their president's* opponent for mishandling classified information in the form of emails on a private server is MISHANDLING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION! The sanctions are not being implemented, even after overwhelming, presidential* veto-proof support in congress. Vlad the impaler is hellbent on repealing the Magnitsky Act, and he has the right stooges in our executive and legislative branches in the government of our shredding republic to do it.

With the release of the Nunes memo, likely on Carter Page that's probably being exploited as an asset (my thought) in a "honey pot" trap, the FBI's hands are tied, and the republican* house knows it. They can't say which area in the memo is true or false because THAT would reveal "sources and methods." Methods like those the traitor Edward Snowden revealed on his work in the NSA (he's conveniently in Russia for "protection"). Sources like HUMINT: human intelligence, meaning spies and informants, behind enemy lines in Afghanistan and Iraq, or allied agents in Russia.

As someone who had to go through an excruciating interview with the-then Defense Intelligence Service over my SF-86 form (the same one the first son-in-law has botched ad nauseum without consequences), that the investigator kept me over 2 HOURS because as the only African American in my Air Training Command class, he couldn't believe I had never smoked weed. "Why should I believe you?" he asked. My answer: "because most of my class would likely have driven into my neighborhood to buy it, going back to their pristine suburbs. Just because I lived there, doesn't mean I used anything!" He said they would personally interview five people and "I'd better be telling the truth." I challenged him to interview ten. I passed my security clearance.

"Sources and methods" was drilled into ALL of us the whole time I held a Top Secret SCIF (special compartmental information facility) clearance in the Air Force. I had to in order to work in Communications for COMSEC (Communications Security) and OPSEC (operations security). I was in during the Cold War, when Vladimir was master spy head of the KGB. It was the difference between winning and losing; the difference between agents and informants for the FBI or the CIA living through an operation...or dying.

I'm incensed as a veteran because a lot of people are about to get killed, and that's not hyperbole.

What American would want to serve their nation when its president* is willing to sacrifice their lives to cover up a possible crime, collusion or espionage? What American would want to serve in the Armed Forces when our elected representatives* (I guess I have to use the asterisk for these yahoos, too) would collude to stop an investigation to protect ONE man and a demographically dwindling party, versus our COUNTRY?

The frightening thing that's likely to happen is a lot of good, experienced people are going to start running for the door, or retiring before being put in harms way by traitorous buffoons. #MAGA should mean: morons are governing America. I can't blame them.

However, you can't GO FUND intelligence services. They take years to build in apparatus and infrastructure and apparently, a few months of septuagenarian bowel-movement tweeting incessantly to deconstruct, along with a feckless congress that hasn't read The Constitution they swore to "protect and defend."

And like a hog fattened for the slaughter, that's when our republic (like Rome) will topple over the cliff, pushed over by a master spy...and his orange puppet.

February One...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 1, 2018 at 5:34pm

The Greensboro Four

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

I will be here. It will be an honor to be in their great presence.

Greensboro, N.C. (Jan. 8, 2018) - In continued honor of the legacy of Jibreel Khazan (Ezell Blair Jr.), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond -- better known collectively as the A&T Four, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University will hold the 58th Annual February One Sit-In Commemorative program “Conscious for the Culture.” The university will welcome White House correspondent and CNN political analyst April Ryan as keynote speaker for the event scheduled for 8 a.m., Thursday, Feb. 1, in the Alumni Foundation Event Center.

Similar to the leadership and courageous acts of the A&T Four’s protest against segregated lunch counters (which ignited a national sit-in movement) and corresponding segregation laws of the 1960s, Ryan has been a leader among her peers. She stands alone as the only black female reporter covering urban issues from the White House, a position she’s held for American Urban Radio Networks since the Clinton era.

Ryan has served on the board of the prestigious White House Correspondents Association, one of only three African Americans to do so in the association’s over 100-year history. Even in the face of often pointed criticism and ostracism, she continues to champion the cause and agenda of minorities.

NC A&T State University to Commemorate 58th Sit-In; Award-Winning Journalist April Ryan to Keynote