The Gated Community Mentality, NYT Opinion article by Richard Benjamin, author of “Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America”and a senior fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan research center
So, how far have we advanced since the '60s?
Nothing but goodies behind her back..dimple cheeked fat kneed girl. Long lashes playfully blink, a fat hand she fans which faces toward her breast. ..
In her seat she gleefully kicks, scraping her heels in the already worn scratches of the hardwood floor.
"Come on man!! Hurry up and play."She laughs. "You might as well fold. You know I won!"
He ignores her, biting his lower lip.
Impatiently she squirms, and spins in her seat. Tossing her hair behind her, and leaning as far back in the seat as possible. Her neck winding as she circles. Side eye glances..and sneaky snickers.
"Come on man..your down to your shorts.." she giggles..and peeks under the table. "Just fold already!"
He shyly..laughs. "Nope. I'm not caving..you haven't won yet."
She smiles..and makes a noticeable glance under the table. Cracking up now.. "Really? I'm still fully dressed!" with her arms widely stretched out and a slow twirl in the chair.
He frowns and twists his lips..but she's so silly, he can't help but laugh. "Very Funny..ha. ha.".
Anxiously, she spins again. Waving the cards around. "You see em..You see em.." playing.. "I got cha...I got cha." hysterically laughing.
"No. What I see is that maybe..you've had too much juice".
"Whatever"
Alright..I quit. You win.
Really?" What do I win..hee hee.
He slaps his chest..You win all of this..
.......(to be continued)
Listen to this
The story of an officer of justice who finds that the just he serves is at the mercy of the law. Follow him as he tries to better the system by outfitting himself in the garb of a self-styled vigilante whose sole purpose is to gather information where cops fear to tread and attorneys are hampered by the very laws they serve, Kulprit has circumvented those laws, but finds that the journey leaves him cold. The criminals he faces don't give a damn about the law or the justice it's supposed to represent and honest people, often those the most innocent, fall through the cracks.
Join him on his journey as he begins to understand just what will be required of him as a vigilante and would he be able to cross the line and take the law into his own hands. When gathering information wasn't enough, Kulprit had to make the hard decision of getting his hands dirty to stop those who are so morally reprehensible that the law has no answer for the crimes they commit and no form of punishment could ever fit their crimes. If he becomes as ruthless as them, would there be any salvation for him and would he want it?
These are the questions... be afraid of the answers.
by Kevin Darmanie with Darrell Goza
Exclusive Online Preview:
http://issuu.com/nightray2002/docs/_kulprit-chap1_issuu
and video of the release event:
http://www.blacksciencefictionsociety.com/video/video/listForContributor?screenName=2u3u8lyerikuw
Physics World: The Challenges of 'big science'; Big-Science Supplement
I have posted my book on goodreads.com. I need your support for a review. Anyone who has read my book, please support me a post a review on this site.
Blessings, C.M.
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| Credit: Physics World |
...and, it's NOT an "April Fool's" joke!
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
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 |
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.
Discover Magazine: 20 Things You Didn't Know About...Math
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| PhDComicsdotcom |
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).
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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 |
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) |
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.
* Now: Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence - C4I.
AAAS Science Mag: Earth Warming Faster Than Expected
