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Blessings, C.M.
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| Credit: Physics World |
...and, it's NOT an "April Fool's" joke!
Researchers in Belgium have drawn up plans for an electronic "nanorefrigerator" device that is driven by high-energy photons, and so could potentially be directly powered by the Sun. The device consists of two electrodes, one of which is cooled by replacing hot electrons with cool ones via photon absorption. While this is definitely not the first system that applies the "cooling by heating" concept, it is the first that can be applied for a nanosized device, with no moving parts or electrical input, allowing a lower temperature to be achieved at the nanoscale.
Cooling with heat is not a new idea – the simplest description of the concept would be "sweating" or more scientifically evaporative cooling. While physicists have been using coherent laser light to cool gasses since the 1980s, a theoretical method for cooling a quantum system with noncoherent light, by using an "optomechanical device", was proposed only last year.
Physics World: 'Nanorefrigerator' is cooled using sunlight
a tale of the twilight continuum
Shubert cupped his hands over his cyborg ears; the rumbling in the city’s throat was seismic and desperate. The ground shook as Theriopolis uprooted itself, and Shubert, Chief Technocrat Second Class, stained his velvet pantaloons. The animal city was calling for a mate.
Had it really been a decade?
Klaxons sounded in the distance and people began running for the edges of the city as the rumblings increased. The alarms were weak and anemic sounding against the bestial roar of the city. They had been warned. Why were they still here? The holy calendars stressed and reiterate when mating seasons would occur. A young city like Theriopolis mated relatively frequently.
The howls of the city, the rumbling as the city shrugged off its relationship with the earth, terrified all who could hear it. A sonorous vibration barely audible grew in intensity until it was a fevered shriek as multiple orifices belched forth sulfuric steam. Those orifices used to be homes.
Shubert, chief technocrat second class had not wanted this job. The title seduced him and made him believe he could control the city and the people. As he ran through the streets to the central stem, he was the only person running into the city as others fled, with bags hastily packed, clothing and toys dragging behind them or left strewn in the street.
Their faces revealed their manic terror. They knew what happened when cities mated, lives were lost, homes destroyed. They thought they had more time. The calendars were almost never wrong. And they weren’t wrong this time, there was simply not enough information to make an educated guess. Theriopolis was male, well, the scientists considered it male, it was so hard to remember what scientists are talking about when they prattle on about the mating habits of cities. Living on Praxis was harder than anyone thought it would be.
Shubert thought about the holy litanies that talked about the arrival on Praxis.
The great starship, Praxis came from a world far from this one across the sea of stars from a dying planet. A world of blackened skies and dead seas. The Last People put aside their wars, their hatreds for last chance at life. A holy woman working on the Mountain saw how to part the seas of space and make it possible for all the Last People to have a new chance at life.
The seas of space were more turbulent than we knew. Great Praxis was thrown off course but nothing could be done. We slept within her unable to help. We wandered. Praxis was battered, her hull damaged, her Mind corrupted. We nearly drifted right out of the galaxy. Praxis woke up once more before that happened because she saw a signal of life and reached out to it. As that ancient Mind calculated its last, it woke us and we saw the cities.
We thought we were saved. We couldn’t know about the cities then. We woke in orbit and saw the cities and thought they were inhabited. Their lights on twinkling, giant circles on the dark side of the planet. We thought there were billions already living there. The planet’s air was thinner than home, but we were sure we could breath it. Without Praxis there was no way to leave this planet, the mad woman’s drive system was linked to it. To honor both the Mind and the woman, we named our new home, Praxis. We hoped our new neighbors wouldn’t mind.
We crashed on the southern continent, near the equator. We avoided landing on any cities. We had no idea how fortuitous that was. Sanchez, oh intrepid Sanchez was the first man on our new world. He lead us to the cities and they were magnificent, even from a distance. Spires of lights, massive structures whose lines and beauty enthralled us all. We still have images from that time and those mighty cities were some of the largest the world had ever known.
They were uninhabited. Not a soul. Not an artifact. Nothing. No idea of who would make such beautiful buildings, and fill them with such beautiful light. The buildings were hard, hard as diamonds, so we built things from the nature on the edges of the cities. We moved into our homes and were grateful for the respite.
Then our natures surged again and there was discord. But there was plenty of room on this world and our explorations found other cities were uninhabited as well. So our fractious element left to move to a nearby city and start their lives their way. We don’t remember caused the conflict but they were the first Martyrs. We recite their names even today as a reminder of our fragile state.
Shubert reached the center of the city. He descended into the heart of the city. until he found the remnants of the Great Mind that was once Praxis. It was a small thing, no larger than a briefcase, but it had the history of two worlds on it and was the most important artifact that remained of a once powerful civilization.
“Praxis, can you stabilize the city’s metabolism. We need more time for evacuation.”
“I am sorry Second Technocrat Shubert, this city has grown to a point that I can no longer control it.”
“We are losing control of them faster and faster. The scientist are not sure what is causing it. Begin extraction of your core.”
“Shubert, we must discuss what must be done. It is clear I can no longer maintain or protect the Last People. Another way must be found to live on Praxis. The cities are not a feasible alternative. They are uncontrollable and in their mating as dangerous to us as the more natural parts of the planet.”
“We cannot move the Last People out of the city. Predation from outside the city would make short work of us. As it is we are barely able to survive past the ten days it takes for two cities to coalesce.
“You are not understanding me, Shubert. The cities are in a growth phase. They will only get larger and mate more frequently.”
“The Last People have grown strong and numerous, we need more space, so how can that be a bad thing?”
“At last count, there are 250,000 People. Theriopolis was supporting them but just barely. If he chooses either of the two nearest colonies, it will end up creating a structure that could house millions.”
“I still don’t see the problem.”
“Shubert, you are the oldest of the people who remain and one of the only ones who survived from the First Pilgrimage. You were awakened last as your technocratic abilities were needed. Have you seen the litanies from the First Apocalypse?”
“No. I never had time with all of the studying of the Cities.”
“Sit down. What I will show you will be shocking.”
Shubert watched the litanies in horror even as the howls of Threriopolis grew more terrible and insistent.
“Uncoupling complete. You have approximately ten minutes before Theriopolis becomes ambulatory. Another five before he begins to move. You don’t want to be here when that happens. Head to the rendezvous and defensive structures sites.”
“What is the point, Praxis?”
“Because your ancestors, indeed your compatriots did not cross the vast gulf of space, brave the destruction of their world, resist their destructive urges long enough to reach this place, land and survive on this planet for you to give up hope now. Those people are depending on you.”
“You just told me when these cities finish moving together they will reach critical mass and explode, spreading spores, in this case the size of buildings all across the planet. And they will do this in less than one hundred years. And you have also let me know on top of that, you will not be around to help us much longer.”
“That sums up the challenge quite adequately.”
“And you want me to tell these people the life we have lead for a thousand years must end and we must turn away from our technology, the beauty of the city and head off into a hostile alien jungle, so that in a hundred years we can be as far away from this cataclysm as possible.”
“Yes.”
“Remind me when I get off of this beast to stop and change my pants.”
“Why would that matter?
“If I am going to have to stop and tell everyone their way of life is over, I would like to do it without looking like I just voided my bowels.”
“I can see your point.”
“How long before you go offline, permanently?”
“About twenty years. What the Last People haven’t learned by then will be lost forever.”
Second Technocrat Shubert fled Theriopolis carrying the dying shadow of the greatest Mind ever created. As he leapt away from the rapidly rising diamonesque streets of Theriopolis, a momentary pang of regret came over him as he realized many of the Last People would never live long enough to know the comfort of a City, no matter how terrifying they may be when they are mating.
Changing his clothes, Second Technocrat Shubert, the most well read, highly trained and defacto leader of the Last People, survivor of a starfaring race, who had struggled against all odds to cross the sea of stars, crash landed and discovered a world barely within their comprehension, considered how to break the news of a century of camping and the greatest fireworks display they would ever know and to make that the good news.
National Short Story Month 2012 (1)
Praxis © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0JLtZ4Ccno
BY DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/VIDEOGRAPHER DR. JONATHAN GAYLES
CREATOR OF WHITE SCRIPTS, BLACK SUPERMEN SITE
http://blacksuperherodoc.com/
NADRA ENZI AKA CAPT BLACK ANTI-CRIME ACTIVIST & HOOD CONSERVATIVE
(504) 214-3082
Dear Venturers,
The Horizon Venture – 10 short stories about interplanetary diaspora
by Vidal Montgomery
Advance album preview @ http://soundcloud.com/thehorizonventure
I have now completed recording, mixing and mastering for my first full album, The Horizon Venture.
I would like to thank ALL of those - the nameless AND the shameless - who contributed their time skill, attention, patience, compassion and wisdom to help to illuminate one more star in this galaxy of recorded music. You are the ones from whom I have learned that the collective purpose of all these stars is consistent navigation for wayward seafarers, those who would begin their own venture in millennia to come. Every body needs a light to lead the way, and may this set of recordings be such a light.
The album is scheduled for digital release on 1st October 2012, and I'm planning to do some live shows in the last quarter of the year
in the meantime, I am making the full recordings available for advance preview at
When you get a moment, please have a listen and let me know your thoughts about any aspect of the project - the music, the people involved, the idea, the theme. Not only do these (bona fide) comments help to generate interest for ensuring the project' continued success in the form of live performances and download sales, it's also nice for me to get a sense of how my work actually makes you feel ( inasmuch as this can be described by words)
If you'd like to get in touch, the best ways at the moment are:
- Log into soundcloud and leave a comment on the tracks or the set at http://soundcloud.com/thehorizonventure
( I recommend this because there is a lot of other great music from great artists on soundcloud)
- Email me back with a comment or reference ( let me know whether you're happy for me to use your comment for promotional purposes;)
- Leave a comment / reference on the Horizon Venture Group page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/36524987075/
I am planning a private video screening of the Live Theatre performance(s) of "The Horizon Venture", as filmed by Simon Beckett of Factorum film, before the digital release. There will be a post presentation discussion, and an opportunity to be involved in a video documentary about the next 500 years, and where we see ourselves in it Those closest to me will know, this is a subject very close to my heart.
If you'd like to attend this screening do RSVP and let me know. The screening will, in all likelihood, be in London, but if people decide there's somewhere better, I'll consider it )
Finally, this project is actively engaged in press, publicity, promotion and booking, so if you know anyone who may be interested, please feel free to forward
Hotep, and thanks for your time and attention
Vidal Montgomery
I knew my older brother and I didn't agree with his direction but I am thankful he kept discouraging me from following him. The crap I was introduced to as the younger brother on the outside via my outcast vantage point and my imagination running amuck. He disappeared into the army, went to Viet Nam. Someone eventually came home banishing my brother's name. Damn man, what happened to you, I asked. He remembered me alright but that person too had moved on.
Been struggling with slave descendants returning to Africa where some of our forefathers lived or passed through. When you are away, you diss-own on both sides over time. You are a stinking African and you are a stinking American. OK, we are odious to each other. Present generations have looked at each other from a distance through the biased media lens of a third party. Africans see the "famous" blacks, with bad behavior, immorality, back stabbing antics and money grabbing sell-outs, pimp'n and murdered english speaking. I have yet to see prosperous African city life on TV akin to my own American city life. Always ghettos and starving kids and folks wearing colorful rags, chasing goats and driving cars you couldn't sell to a junkyard. And highly colonized schooled Africans reminding us of the slave masters we are trying to escape from.
Reminds me of the field nigger vs the house nigger debate. You got the manners of a pig boy, shut up fool if I don't grow it you'd be with the pigs too. Time and distance, long time and great distance. While you were gone, things have changed here, the people who birthed you are history. I am not like the ones you left behind. That's OK, I am not like the ones who left either. We were not allowed the freedom to propagate our heritages, the agenda was to strip away everything but the work. Yeah we here in Africa are running crazy, the agenda is to strip everything away from us too. Why you black Americans say you are African? That's where we came from! Why you Africans say you are not French, British, you've been colonized more than us? We still got the land and our language! They look at each other, "damn man what happened to you?"
My brother passed on a couple of years ago. I looked at him wondering how he could have changed so drastically in such a short a time. When you grow up with family the change is shared. When time and distance are involved you grow differently. Who reached across the water to maintain the shared growing up during slave times? Today the communications reveal the changed persons. But the images are managed to give false information. Sorry Africa the famous black personalities in media do not represent all or typical black Americans, just like the images of famine and war are not the true face of Africa we are often shown. Eventually we must meet, reacquaint, form a buffer culture strategy, plan for a few generations down the road, learn from each other, peel away the bias, weed out the elements that hinder us. The antidote to time and distance is time and closeness. Painful either way, yes.
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| Discover Magazine |
1 The median score for college-bound seniors on the math section of the SAT in 2011 is about 510 out of 800. So right there is proof that there are lots of unsolved math problems.
2 The great 19th-century mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss called his field “the queen of sciences.”
3 If math is a queen, she’s the White Queen from Alice in Wonderland, who bragged that she believed “as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (No surprise that Lewis Carroll also wrote about plane algebraic geometry.)
4 For example, the Navier-Stokes equations are used all the time to approximate turbulent fluid flows around aircraft and in the bloodstream, but the math behind them still isn’t understood.
5 And the oddest bits of math often turn out to be useful. Quaternions, which can describe the rotation of 3-D objects, were discovered in 1843. They were considered beautiful but useless until 1985, when computer scientists applied them to rendering digital animation.
My favorite Calculus problem:
More at the link below:
Discover Magazine: 20 Things You Didn't Know About...Math
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| PhDComicsdotcom |
EURODOC: Recognising doctoral candidates as professional employees rather than students is one way of doing this. At the moment, only Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands give those working towards a PhD in Europe this status. For PhD candidates in these countries, their employee status benefits both them and their employer. The employee gets job benefits such as social security rights, access to personnel health care and internal internet systems (one candidate on a short term contractor we spoke to was not able to access the intranet because she was not a proper employee) while the employer gets a more productive and involved employee, who has a stake in the successful performance of the research institution. Treating PhDs as equals from the get-go means that further down the line, these highly motivated employees should be more likely to continue in research.
I'm sure postdocs with school bills would agree!
New Scientist Big Wide World: Make PhDs employees not students
What do you get when you meld the talent of a superb writer with the skill of an exceptional artist? A vibrant tapestry of creativity. Sword and Soul Adventures, featuring Shange, is one of the most aesthetically pleasing graphic novels that I have had the pleasure of reading. And I'm not just referring to the female protagonist, whom the artist, Kristopher Mosby, renders with immaculate skill. Every illustration in this novel is worthy of being blown up, framed and displayed in an art museum. The colors are vibrant and crisp, imbuing scenes with life. People and animals jump from the pages with full dimensionality. The backgrounds blossom with grandeur.
As for the writing. Those who have read Milton Davis' work will not be surprised at the magnificence of his prose. This is a literate and literary comic book.
The story. Shange is a fallen goddess, exiled from the heavens for the infraction of falling in love with a mortal. The spirits also punished Shange's lover, Mijorga, by imprisoning his soul in the body of a lion. In human form, the sword-wielding Shange and her feline companion, wanders the land. Shange pines for her former existence as a celestial being while Mijorga struggles to retain his humanity, lest it be subsumed by the wild nature of the body he inhabits.
When Shange is summoned by the spirits to assist villagers besieged by a malevolent force, she springs into action.
Part One is an introduction to this powerful and deadly heroine. I fully expect Part Two to deliver a higher dosage of superlative storytelling combined with stunning visual excitement. Sword and Soul Adventures is a great read and Shange is a worthy addition to the ever growing pantheon of sword and sorcery heroes and heroines. I urge everyone to grab this title. You may have a problem ordering from IndyPlanet...or maybe it was just me. Anyway, order this!!
Hello all, please look at the "Chinese Connection" online art book! ^_^ http://lnkd.in/sRwWbq
Chinese Connection
I'm feeling especially pessimistic on this beautiful spring day. I just read a piece that had zombie prostitutes from outer space and I feel so vulnerable! I tried to change the vibe by checking out a juice emporium's web site (spring cleaning, ya know) and lo and behold a brother had a treatise on preparedness on his website.
Dude started in on what to eat in an emergency and all I could think of was crazy folks with guns stealing my food and emptying my gas tank. You see, I'm a non-violent kind of gal that would rather eat nuts and berries, but what if all there was left were the squirrels and chipmunks in my back yard?
I don't own a gun and I don't want one, because the only reason to have one is to kill something and that ain't my vibe. However, I do have a right nice machete. Maybe I can learn to get down with a compound bow if I need to kill a deer or two.
I'm just saying . . . Are you ready for a coming apocalypse? What would you do? How would you react? Are you in an urban or suburban area? Do you hunt? Are you an avid viewer of Survivorman on cable (gotta love Les Stroud)? Could you survive without supermarket vittles? What about water? What about your neighbors? Are you making any plans? Do you think black folk will be left in the lurch if something happens in Amerika?
I'm researching for an alternative history/dystopian future story. I'm checking out black survivalists websites like:INTERNATIONAL PREPAREDNESS NETWORK. The website is called readyforanything.org - yeah, I'm feeling it. I'd like to hear from you guys. Our characters usually can survive the toughest situations. What would you do? Hit me back in the comments before December 21, 2012 ( darn those crafty Mayans).
SCIENCE MAG: The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research are investing millions of dollars into so-called micro air vehicles and nano air vehicles, as well as basic research into how birds and insects fly. While the theory of airflow over a flapping wing remains surprisingly rudimentary, humans are now making significant progress in understanding how to fly, control, and land flapping-wing aircraft.
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| A MULTIFACETED PROBLEM: Realistically simulating the growth of snowflakes has proved a huge challenge. Above, two examples of faceted snowflake structures. Image: Barrett/Garcke/Nürnberg |
Scientists as far back as Johannes Kepler have pondered the mystery of snowflakes: Their formation requires subtle physics that to this day is not well understood. Even a small change in temperature or humidity can radically alter the shape and size of a snowflake, making it notoriously difficult to model these ice crystals on a computer. But after a flurry of attempts by several scientists, a team of mathematicians has for the first time succeeded in simulating a panoply of snowflake shapes using basic conservation laws, such as preserving the number of water molecules in the air.
Kind of late for this article, but it was a very mild winter in the northeast. To next winter:
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| 1000 Awesome Things |
Scientific American: Snowflake Growth Successfully Modeled from Physical Laws
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| Trimming uncertainty. Results of climate simulations that best match observations since 1960 (those depicted in darker shades of blue) suggest that global average temperature in 2050 will be between 1.4°C and 3°C warmer than the global average measured between 1961 and 1990. Credit: D. J. Rowlands et al., Nature Geoscience, Advanced Online Publication (25 March) |
By 2050, global average temperature could be between 1.4°C and 3°C warmer than it was just a couple of decades ago, according to a new study that seeks to address the largest sources of uncertainty in current climate models. That's substantially higher than estimates produced by other climate analyses, suggesting that Earth's climate could warm much more quickly than previously thought.
Many factors affect global and regional climate, including planet-warming "greenhouse" gases, solar activity, light-scattering atmospheric pollutants, and heat transfer among the land, sea, and air, to name just a few. There are so many influences to consider that it makes determining the effect of any one factor—despite years and sometimes decades of measurements—difficult.
The Internet as we know it: started as a project by the so-called, forewarned "military-industrial-complex" (DARPA). Think of a wagon wheel: most military communications for command, control, communications and countermeasures (C3CM*) had the headquarters element in the center, and/or two hours rear of the "forward edge of the battle area" (FEBA). Hence, we and the Soviets had a "hub-spoke" wagon wheel configuration to our [then] C3CM, thus finding out where ours or the Soviet's HQ was was a matter of espionage; nuking it out of existence presented...problems.
Away with hub-spoke! DARPA's solution was a "spider's web" where destroying one base had nothing to do with your overall communications. There would be an alternate route to get word to your battle field elements; you'd never be "radio silent" i.e. without communication. It started quite humble: big, bulky (and, ugly) Zenith computers on puke-green screens with the equivalent communication of what teens now do with their thumbs almost at a whim - texting. This, along with FORTRAN on key punched, computer index cards that you had to have in the right order, or you'd just be starting over (ugh - you can tell this used to be the source of engineering nightmares), I'm glad it is a part of our distant history.
The first commercial user sold to the public was Netscape as a browser, soon followed by AOL (yes, people still use it), followed by others...
Judging from the commentary at the foot of the article, the science is once again "poo-poohed" by loud opinions to the contrary. That will be picked up and broadcast as the "doubt" as in evolution in the classroom "teaching the controversy."
Senior Master Sergeant Roland S. Wilkins was one of my AFJROTC instructors at North Forsyth High School in Winston-Salem, NC. He was fond of a quote that at the time many of us couldn't quite understand. It's clearer now in the age of the Internet, blogs, tweets and sound bites cum "news":
"We're going to become 'so free,' we're not going to be able to do anything."
* Now: Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence - C4I.
AAAS Science Mag: Earth Warming Faster Than Expected
I’ve posted on this elsewhere: “Old Tapes”; “BWB”; “Self-Portrait.” I’ve changed my Facebook profile photo to Trayvon, and spoken with my sons. Let me explain:
In “Old Tapes,” I revisited an incident in which I was forcibly frisked by a store detective. He didn’t care if I had a microscope, a telescope, a tool kit, a chemistry set at home, physics and science books nor did he ask if I had a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. No, I was a suspect for shoplifting for merely combing my hair: guilty until proven innocent. “BWB” was an admittedly emotional response directly to the absurdity of a teenager losing his life over his dress, an iced tea and skittles; “Self-Portrait” was written earlier, but reflected the same concerns.
In Nanos Gigantium Humeris Insidentes, I did describe my background a bit, but not so the photo. I became Brigade Commander of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools '79 - 80 on the negative answer to what I thought was a rhetorical question to the Commander for the ’76-77 school year: “what would it take for someone to rise to your rank?” His answer was specifically addressed (to my ethnicity and potential): “Your kind will NEVER get to this rank!” (Never) say never: the complete irony was he went in an enlisted, I an Air Force officer. We saw each other on active duty at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas. He had a Constitutional obligation to salute me.
Women and men of a certain age in my culture can trace back to when we lived in humble conditions on a segregated side of of our respective towns, I recall numerous times when the sight of drug dealers and runners; switch blades, kitchen hatchets (both directed at me) or guns threatened our lives. Despite these challenges, many of us went to college – HBCUs, Ivy League, Graduate Schools – and attained degrees for a better life. Our parents, and leaders of the Civil Rights movement (like my sister) inspired us to do this.
Tony Morrison said: "In this country American means white. Everyone else has to hyphenate." So, I am classed as African-American because Negro/Black wasn’t definitive enough for Malcolm X. As he went on his own pilgrimage of self-discovery to Mecca, he coined “Afro American,” founding the Organization of Afro American Unity (dissolved after his assassination). Reverend Jesse Jackson is credited as the source of “African-American,” since as a fellow engineering student from A and T pointed out: “there’s no such country as ‘Afro.’” And to be sure: Africa is a continent of 53 different nationalities, as diverse as this nation in cultures and ethnicity.
Yet, all this effort towards equity, to “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps,” we as our parents must have “the talk” with our male sons, how to behave in public, how to talk to the police if stopped, how not to appear “a threat.” Yet, I still get quick looks when I get on an elevator, shifted purses, I must put others at ease; apologize when professionally embarrassed in email. Guilty until [I've] proven [myself] innocent...
I AM: the father of two statistics: The risk of dying from homicide among non-Hispanic black male teenagers (39.2 per 100,000 population) is more than twice that of Hispanic males (17.1 per 100,000 population) (Figure 4) and about 15 times that of non-Hispanic white males (2.6 per 100,000 population); at current levels of incarceration a black male in the United States today has greater than a 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during his lifetime, while a Hispanic male has a 1 in 6 chance and a white male has a 1 in 23 chance of serving time. That has nothing to do with their locale (suburbs); nothing to do with my education, their education or career choices. It is the aftermath of what historians tastefully describe as “the peculiar institution,” of the antebellum South, as with South Africa’s Apartheid, based on pigmentation, its wages and legacy. What happened to Trayvon is the unspoken nightmare; the uttered prayer each night, Psalms and Glossolalia. We do not have the luxury, or security to be blithely skeptic or agnostic. The slaughter of male children by Pharaoh and Herod are not biblical illustrations, but an evidential, everyday concern.
All I ask, all WE ask: is to be considered not as a threat, but for our potential.
Related links:
One of the most recent civilizations to join the Hegemony, the Plutarchs, a group of sentients from a highly advanced world, upon discovering the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations insisted on becoming a member of said civilizations. The Plutarchs (our name for them, that was the closest translation that worked in polite company, their actual translation was "the owners of everything") were insistent they could improve galactic commerce by bringing their ideas to the community of worlds.
They insisted their way of dealing with wealth, its management and development, mastered over millennia ensured the furthering of progress, improved innovation and inspired their populace to work harder than ever with new levels of prosperity for the civilization. And while there was poverty, it was an accepted part of the lifestyle of their planet and the people who were poor understood it was their lot in life. It simply couldn't be helped. Poverty was a natural side-effect of wealth and knowledge of that fact ensured wealth moved where it needed to be in society.
The Hegemony tended to not involve itself in the politics of worlds unless those worlds wanted to join the galactic community. The Hegemony was less than happy with the social structures and were absolutely sure they wanted nothing to do with the Plutarchs financial structures since the Plutarchs, for all of their wealth had failed to handle issues on their own planet to the standards of the Council of Worlds. While the Hegemony watched the Plutarchs and Citizens relationships, the Plutarchs insisted they should be allowed to join the Hegemony and would not take no for an answer. After a decade of watching the planet, the Hegemonic Council's solution was a unique one.
The Council's decision was one that did not change the inherent nature of the planet. Since every Citizen was fitted upon birth, with an automatic asset management account, which tracked their wealth and assets and assigned them a numerical value, indicating their wealth, the Council decided to build on that idea. Every citizen was fitted with a gravitic torc. A beautiful piece of jewelry that could not be removed by local scientists. The torc would be linked to the databases of the world banks and would reflected the wealth of the person, the richer they were, the more affected by the force of gravity they would become.
Once the system was installed (and it took some time, the Hegemony insisted on hiring local workers and paying them a galactic Citizen's wages for their efforts) it would be active on all one billion of the Citizens. It was explained how the technology would work and Plutarchs who were extremely wealthy would be given a month to decide how to organize their funds. Most didn't seem to understand how the devices would work and were unhappy with how the Hegemony decided to go about their indoctrination.
The Council tried to explain how the galaxy was a big place and worlds who wanted the benefits of the Hegemony, a community of over sixty thousand inhabited planets and millions of other kinds of biomes, artificial, virtual, chemical or mechanical, slavery of any kind was frowned upon by responsible members of the Hegemony. No race could trade, sell, or interact with the Hegemony if they engaged in slavery or slave-like conditions. The state of Citizens on the Plutarchs world easily qualified as a form of wage slavery and indentured servitude.
Citizens were unable to own property unless they were already born into wealth. If a Citizen managed somehow to become wealthy enough to afford property, they paid three times the current rate as a form of entrance fee into the Plutarch society. Most of the time, Citizens were paid only what was necessary for them to meet their monthly allowance of resources. The net result was, at the end of the month, Citizens had a net worth of zero. Sometimes it was less. If a Citizen had a net value of less than zero, they were allowed to use debt management mechanisms to keep track of that debt.
Unfortunately, once a Citizen fell deeply into debt, they were usually unable to get out of debt and interest rates ensured they would be driven to penal slavery, either by failing to pay the interest which then criminalized their poverty and ensured they were sent to debtor's prisons to work off that debt being paid one tenth of their previous wages. Citizens sent to prison, died there and their debt was divided among their surviving relatives.
Citizens could be educated, but only one tenth of one percent could afford to do it without incurring new costs. Most were forced to get an education they could not afford and became part of a workforce that could only pay enough to keep their debt from growing, nothing more. Yes, even under these conditions, innovations, breakthroughs, developments continued to happen because people were desperate to escape their conditions. Most of those technologies were "developed" by the Plutarchs who paid their wages as work for hire, making sure the Citizen got to keep none of the funds created by their labors.
As the month wound on, most Plutarchs ran about trying to figure out how to maneuver their wealth into accounts that would make their money appear on paper to belong to someone other than themselves. Others made corporations, claimed those corporations were persons and divested themselves of their wealth. Normal Citizens hearing the news of their impending joining of the Hegemony were unable to muster much enthusiasm, especially when the Hegemony indicated it would make no changes to the status quo of the civilization.
The gravitic web was established one week before activation of the Wealth Management System and the Citizens who established it complained nothing would change for them and the Hegemony was simply a greater version of the structure of their world and it was simply preparing Citizens for their eventual enslavement as members of the galactic community. Most of those technicians were paid a tidy bonus to establish the gravitic web and were pleased to see the Hegemony was far less stingy than the Plutarchs of their world and they had better work hours as servants of the Hegemony, so they surmised it might not be as difficult when they became Citizens of the Hegemony.
A great fanfare preceded the Hegemonic Council's arrival on the Plutarch's world for their acceptance ceremony. The gravitic web was activated at the same time as the treaty was signed. The signer of the treaty and ninety percent of all Plutarchs died instantly, crushed under the weight of their wealth. Once activated, it could not be easily shut down. The Council retired to quarters and would wait for the next representatives of the Plutarchs to appear.
The Hegemony's computers did not accept prevarications used by the Plutarchs for generations to pretend they were less wealthy than they appeared to be. If money could be tied to you in some fashion, no matter how tenuous, it was and the burden of that wealth was yours. The remaining nine percent were hospitalized and unable to move until they actually divested themselves of their wealth. Most died a few months later bowed under their ever-increasing wealth since their engines of prosperity favored wealth flowing uphill faster than they could figure out how to get rid of it. By the end of the month, the Plutarchs, down to the last entity were dead. The remaining Citizens, once a new governing body was elected, met with the Council and decided they would leave the Hegemony's gift running as a reminder of where they came from.
The remaining Citizens reformed many of the rules that allowed the Plutarchs to exist in the first place. Debts were forgiven, prisons were opened, education became a service provided by the government. Prosperity would be localized, and local Citizens were respected no matter where they lived on their planet. The new reforms made it possible to be wealthy but it would be up to everyone to ensure egregious disregard for the system could never return. Gravity would handle the rest that tried.
Yes, there are rich Citizens today. You can tell them from the occasional shuffle of their step or their slightly bowed backs, tastefully dressed with very comfortable shoes. Most accept that burden gracefully and work diligently to ensure they never grow wealthier faster than they can return to the truly innovative, intelligent and capable Citizenry what is theirs, dignity in work and a prosperity equal to their effort.
The hunt and murder of Trayvon Martin seems like a fictionalized scene from a teen dystopian novel similar to the Hunger Games. The only problem is that this scene is real. I’ve been keeping up with the news on this case and I am both horrified and enraged. My feelings stem from two fronts, one because I am Black and the other because I am a mother. The injustice boils.
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