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The appointment of Elizabeth Warren has raised the hopes of many and the ire of some. According to Simon Johnson, she is the perfect person for the job.
So now the question is, what will she actually be doing? Some Senators don’t know. A lot of folks though, like HuffPost blogger Richard Eskow, seem to know how she will be doing it:
So let’s move into the meat of this. Over the last 24 hours I perused the actual Dodd-Frank bill, skimming through 1,300 pages, and found this helpful White Paper by Vincent DiLorenzo of St. John’s University School of Law, a mere 115 pages. I will return to that in a minute.
Dodd-Frank establishes that the purpose of the Bureau is to implement and enforce federal consumer financial law to ensure that markets for consumer financial products are fair, transparent, and competitive. Which raises the question, if all it is to do is enforce existing law, what has been going on all this time? DiLorenzo addresses that in great depth. A lot of the problem is that the enforcement of the existing law was not a priority of the various regulators that are currently extant. Consumer protections were always secondary. In many cases, consumer protection was viewed as being in conflict with the primary legislative purposes. Two of those legislative purposes have been to keep financial institutions safe and sound and to make home ownership cheap and easy. To accomplish these purposes, a regulator may have determined that banks should have nice fat profits and that credit should be liberal and easily obtained. Well, for a long time the regulators accomplished both of those purposes. However, it was at great expense. DiLorenzo identifies in his paper what some of that expense was. It can be summed up as lasting harm to vulnerable populations who have had their wealth and credit ravaged, predatory profits by many unscrupulous lenders, and of course the damage to financial institution safety and soundness that required the bailout of the entire system, at great taxpayer expense. Then you can add to those the large numbers of unemployed and the damage to general business conditions and the security of all citizens.
So that should be easy to fix, no?
Well, the jury is still out on that. You see, there is a little complication written into the bill. From Dilorenzo:
As discussed in Part One of this article [DiLorenzo's], Congress has embraced three goals for themortgage markets: safety and soundness, access to credit, and fairness. In the past Congressconsistently sought to harmonize these goals and allowed regulatory bodies discretion to act in amanner that served, as nearly as possible, all three of these goals. As consequence, whenCongress debated the imposition of statutory protections for consumers in the past, costs andbenefits of prohibiting particular practices that unfairly disadvantaged consumers wereconsidered but decisions were not determined by the net societal benefits standard. As result,consumer protections were enacted even when they might impair access to credit or mightadversely affect banking industry profits, as fairness was at times accepted as the paramountgoal. Title 10 of the Dodd-Frank Act changes this legislative landscape. Congress has, for thefirst time in recent memory, subordinated the goal of fairness in consumer credit transactions to anew goal of economic efficiency. Congress has embraced what Arrow, Sunstein and others havecautioned against. As a result, if the Bureau does not enact a detailed rule prohibiting particular “unfair” conduct, the industry is faced only with a principles-based prohibition against “unfair”products and practices. The legislative signal that no product or practice is intended to be prohibited if it serves the goal of economic efficiency then serves as a further justification for the industry to continue such activity unrestrained by the legislative principle.
So let me explain that a bit more. In the past, Congress put consumer protection on an equal footing in the legislation. It was implementation of the legislation that allowed consumer protection to be secondary to safety and soundness and liberal credit. Now, the rule-making powers of the Bureau are limited (prohibited) if the proposed rules conflict with the goal of economic efficiency. In other words, if the people in power determine that the consumer protections will restrict the flow of credit, jobs in construction, or whatever their priorities are, they may restrict the ability of the CFPB to make rules.
So there is an element of subjectivity. The door to political influence is wide open. In a Bush administration, there is little doubt that the error would be on the side of the banking lobby and the rules would be prohibited unless it could be proven that they will not interfere with economic efficiency. In an Obama administration, the subjective judgments will likely fall more to the protection of the individual consumer. This is why the qualities that Simon Johnson and Richard Eskow describe are so critical. The director must be articulate and persuasive in order to win these debates.
Now that is not to say there are no teeth in this bill. There is another section that provides greater power to the CFPB in the event an act or practice is considered “abusive.” An act can be considered abusive if it takes “unreasonable advantage” of:
Lack of understanding
Inability of the consumer to protect their interest, or
The reasonable reliance by the consumer on a covered person (employee) to act in the interests of the consumer.
Elizabeth needs to drive a truck through door number three. Banks have taken an adversarial posture relative to their customers in many instances. Number three provides an opportunity to change that.
Finally, there are additional enforcement measures that, if they are used, can change the cost-benefit scenarios the banks and other firms operate under. Often in the past, the downside to an aggressive interpretation of the rules by a business was that their hands would be slapped and they would be required to cease predatory practices. In the meantime they may have made huge amounts of profit and the employees and executives may have personally banked big incentives. Dodd-Frank does provide new forms of relief including disgorgement (the giving back) of compensation for unjust enrichment, public notifications of violations, banning persons from the functions they abused, and civil money penalties. The imposition of such remedies will require a strong hand. The prosecutor, so to speak, will need to ask for a tough sentence.
So welcome, Elizabeth, and godspeed.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Last night, after I finished reading Paula Marantz Cohen’s What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James & Jack the Ripper, I turned on the television to see that Alfred Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder” was on. The movie was at the scene where Margot Mary Wendice asked Mark Halliday if he really believed in the perfect murder. Halliday replied, “Yes, absolutely. On paper, that is. And I think I could, uh, plan one better than most people; but I doubt if I could carry it out.” He went on to explain why. “In stories things usually turn out the way the author wants them to; and in real life they don’t… always.”
How amusing, I thought, since I had just been considering Cohen’s reason for writing such an intriguing mystery, one that had me playing an armchair detective, along with very real ones from history, until the last few pages. (My guess at who Jack the Ripper might be, at least in this work of fiction, was oh so wrong.)
Admittedly, I do not read many mysteries, but this particular one, which is steeped in history and offers another consideration on who the notorious murderer may have been, had me intrigued. Initially, I was less interested in the possibilities of Jack the Ripper and much more curious about Henry James and his siblings. I loved the fact that the author took the question, “Who from history would you invite for dinner?” and expanded it into an intelligent, fascinating novel, one that gives her much wiggle room to imagine how notables, including writers and artists, reflected on the possibility of just who Jack the Ripper was. However, the author’s imagination was fueled by what had to have been extensive research and sharp knowledge of the era rich with such creative figures.
Cohen not only does a great service to those from history, but obviously has a good time doing so. It’s as though she’s imagining how delightful it would be to be a fly on the wall at a formal dinner hosted by Oscar Wilde where the guests include Henry James, Robert Browning, George du Maurier, John Singer Sargent, and Samuel Clemens. The very idea is titillating. Imagine, too, the egos in the room where James and Clemens, published under the nom du plume, Mark Twain, criticize each other’s writing.
Yet, for history buffs, What Alice Knew offers another consideration on who the notorious murderer may have been, but explored as a delightful historical fiction. As it happens, I did many Google searches with the unfamiliar names in this novel, discovering that most of them were real people with real lives living during a time that was unsettled by Jack the Ripper. Halliday was right that “in stories things usually turn out the way the author wants them to; and in real life they don’t… always,” but it’s clear that Cohen relied on historical details to write this work while attempting to glean some possible answers from those who were actually there. By the time I turned to the last page, though, I was satisfied who Cohen revealed as the murderer, but wanted to know so much more about Henry James and his siblings, along with Walter Sickert, Sir Charles Warren, Nora Sidgwick, etc.; hence, the Google search. Here, fiction not only did a fabulous job making me curious about those who lived and breathed during the reign of Jack the Ripper, but made me appreciate the storyteller’s ability to bring to life those long gone talented beings.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

America is full of famous roommates: Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones, Chandler Bing and Joey Tribbiani, Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve — but no one can top Jack the cooking student, Janet the florist, and Chrissy the typist from “Three’s Company.” My research suggests that Jack, Janet and Chrissy each saved 42 percent compared to living alone, allowing them to spend more money in their local communities rather than on fuel and cheap imports.
The plot for all 172 episodes of “Three’s Company” is apparently the same: some sort of big misunderstanding coupled with innuendo that was considered to be very suggestive in the late 1970s. And, to be fair, having roommates often leads to misunderstandings. But are they worth it?
A finding from my preliminary analysis of housing expense data shows that total housing costs compared to number of roommates follows a square root function. So if your total housing costs living alone costs $1,000, getting a roommate will cost about $1,414 ($1,000 times the square root of 2), and getting two roommates will cost about $1,732 ($1,000 times the square root of 3). Per person, this would be $1,000, $707 and $577 respectively, so savings per person decreases with each additional roommate.
Of course, the exact savings depend on the specific property, but sharing a lot of the fixed expenses can add up. Jack, Janet and Chrissy paid less per person on heating and cooling, the kitchen and living room, and other implicit costs associated with renting and moving. Presumably, this allowed Jack to more easily afford his cooking school tuition, spend more at the neighborhood tavern (The Regal Beagle), and generally have more misunderstandings coupled with innuendo.
In economic terms, by living with Janet and Chrissy, Jack is shifting his consumption patterns from residential energy use and furniture to education and hospitality. The latter likely generates more employment and positive spillovers for his California neighborhood.
But, of course, there are downsides. I spoke to a number of people who have recently brought in new roommates — usually friends, parents or adult children — but sometimes bringing in a stranger also provided needed income to prevent foreclosure. And while much less fun than Jack, Janet and Chrissy, there will always be misunderstandings and challenges, particularly with multi-generational households with different lifestyle preferences.
But if filling that extra room can help keep you in your home or spend money on things that are more important to you, be prepared for the financial and psychological risks. Here’s what I would have advised Janet and Chrissy before they let Jack move in:
Make a formal agreement. The girls should have added Jack to the lease, so he can be formally liable to the Ropers for rent. If you can’t do that, be sure to create a written agreement specifying the terms of any living arrangement that clearly outlines when rent and utility expenses are due. Don’t just use formal agreements with strangers, use it for friends and family too.
Don’t lie to your landlord. Janet and Chrissy had to lie to Mr. and Mrs. Roper and say that Jack was gay in order to let him move in. I guess in this specific circumstance it might be okay, but in general it’s not. Be sure to check out your lease to see if it specifies a maximum number of occupants.
Of course, larger households can’t cure a recession, but we all need to think of ways to target our consumption on things that are more meaningful to us. And while Comcast and Chinese factories and Middle Eastern oil magnates might be hurt by it, the local restaurants, florists and other business owners can hire more Jacks, Janets and Chrissys, which helps all of us. And after all, misunderstandings can certainly be fun.

Follow Rohit Chopra on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

To defuse anger in the tea party and across the electorate, President Obama and his administration must first acknowledge it, argues Arianna.
Arianna and Howard Fineman, HuffPost’s newest senior editor, appeared on “Hardball” Monday to weigh in on the midterm elections and President Obama’s town hall remarks.
For too long the White House has touted its accomplishments and ignored middle-class suffering, Arianna explained.
“The president and his administration have for so long said how much they’ve done right that they’re not really addressing where people find themselves,” Arianna said. “They need to address that reality in which people are living. It’s not just a matter of communications.”
Beyond acknowledging voters’ tempers and the high unemployment and foreclosure rates that they’re living through, Obama and Democrats must offer real solutions and present them clearly, Arianna said. “They talk about jobs being a priority, but they haven’t really produced a long list of suggestions.”
Fineman argued that Obama must take a page from former President Clinton and lay out his plans more clearly.
“I hate to say it, [Obama] is still a professor some of the time,” Fineman said. “He’s trying, you see him trying. You want him to get over the hump with these people and really say as Bill Clinton would tell him to do, ‘OK here are the three things we’ve done for you now.’”
During a town hall-style meeting on MSNBC Monday, Obama fielded a question from a middle-class supporter who confessed that she was “exhausted” from supporting him despite a lack of change.
Arianna said the president lacked a compelling response.
“100 million people in this country are now living at a standard of living that is not as good as their parents at the same age,” Arianna said. “The middle class life has become a game of chance.”
WATCH:

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

In the introduction of their 1995 book, The Right to Privacy, Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy point out that the word “privacy” does not appear in the United States Constitution. What’s up with that?
Maybe we should do something about it. Perhaps an addendum to the Constitution is in order regarding privacy? (Yeah, and a round of economic and physical health for everyone.)
Optimistically, I’m seeing more attention focused everyday on the perils of privacy’s absence on Google, Facebook, and a number of other social networks and websites. If we care about privacy, all may not be lost!
At the same time, it is appalling how people are duped into celebrating even less privacy. In a recent twist, banks now offer exciting online deposit programs, where cell phone pictures of checks can be deposited in personal checking accounts from anywhere in your home! Hello and hooray! Welcome to a new criminal opportunity!
In my obsession to understand how privacy has successfully disappeared from our personal lives, I have a habit of interviewing political sharpies on the subject. That is, people who are far more savvy and awake to the ’60s and ’70s than I, who spent those years enjoying my La Jolla-adjacent childhood bubble.
In those days, was there a real, significant difference in our ability to live a private life, I wonder, or was I in a dreamy sleep, unable even then to note the rumblings that would soon mark the end of personal freedom and true private expression?
It seems there were privacy-eroding rumblings — i.e. the credit card revolution — that were soon wildly accelerated by technological advances, the hefty subject of 20th Century economic and sociopolitical history.
Today, I see examples of our invasive society wherever I go.
It’s hard to miss. And I’m not only talking about the commonly camouflaged cameras on street lights at major intersections, or cameras in commercial buildings recording the comings and goings of normal people.
Take, for example, this scenario: a recent visit to a local Starbucks, where 6 aggressive, bulldog animal-men, armed with heavy camera equipment, brazenly announced to me their aim to “shoot” unwelcome footage of an academy award-winning actress upon her return to the parking lot. The scene had a nasty, warlike crust around it.
Entering the place, I saw in the back dark corner the quivering woman in question, pinned to the wall awaiting the police. She spoke with me, crying and clearly shaken.
Okay, I understand the contract of celebrity, but I don’t understand stalking someone outside their home and following them to a Starbucks. For what? A $500 check for capturing an unmade-up famous face? Is it just Us Weekly, or is it a seething public motivation of envy that dines on capturing and studying an imperfect famous face?
This particular woman told me — and I know she knows — that until she is physically harmed or murdered, the police will not help her and the law is on the side of the invaders. She talked about being hurt emotionally, and it was clear to see. She was.
You don’t have to be a celebrity to be vulnerable to the lack of privacy and open invitations to harm others anonymously on the internet. Ugly words are planted everyday by sick, vengeful people whose chief goal is to bring a public figure down.
Perhaps there is no turning back, especially when considering the number of technological opportunities to poison a person’s reputation.
But let us beware. Something appearing on the internet regarding, or in association with a person does not validate the words or make real these possiblly twisted fictions. The question always to ask is, “Who planted these words and for what reason?”
This is a banquet of a time for cowardly, mentally ill people to sneak into the public fabric, their toxic endeavors against others, and have their poisoned words be received without question.
Let’s question the printed word and look deeply and personally into our willingness to be led to negative snap judgments!
And remember: whatever is written tells us something very personal about the writer, the opinion and character of the writer, whoever he or she may be; and nothing at all about the subject of the writing.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

That is from a nice paper that Jim Hennigan sent me by David Gaus, titled The Rural Hospital in Ecuador. It’s about how a highly trained doctor and public health expert came to Ecuador with his own well developed sense of what should be done.
The quote above hints at a successful combination of bottom up and top down: too often experts come in thinking they know what to do as well as how to do it. But communities generally know what they want; they just don’t know how best to get it. And that is where expertise brought in from the outside can make a real difference.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

When Barack Obama was campaigning to be president of the United States in 2008, he frequently promised Americans that he would lead the world. In fact, he and his team relentlessly pounded President George W. Bush for “going it alone” and alienating our friends and allies around the globe. His then-campaign foreign policy adviser and current U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice even joked about how, if elected, they would repair the damage and lead the UN in a way that the Bush team couldn’t. But after almost two years on the job, Rice and Obama haven’t been able to garner support from the UN to implement U.S. foreign policy priorities as they said they would. In fact, on Iran, North Korea, Sudan and UN reform, Obama and Rice haven’t produced the support Bush garnered. While Rice has touted her performance on one Iran sanctions resolution as unique progress at the UN, her final vote count on that one resolution got more “no” votes than Bush’s five Iran resolutions got in total. Unfortunately, Rice has also been painfully quiet when faced with resistance and hostility from the enemies of democracy and freedom. As President Obama goes back to the UN this week, there are 10 things he should do to more forcefully push for progress on U.S. priorities and more aggressively defend the U.S.:
* Make clear that the Arizona law the UN attacked was written to stop illegal immigration, not prohibit legal immigration.
* Call out the Human Rights Council for yet another disastrous year of Israel bashing and overlooking rights violators.
* Nominate a U.S. ambassador-level person to tackle UN reform and UN budget waste, fraud, abuse and duplicity.
* Ask Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to investigate the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to ascertain how erroneous scientific claims were added to official UN reports.
* Make clear that the United States will not unilaterally disarm its nuclear weapons and will not support restrictions on private firearm ownership.
* Call for a total review of every UN peacekeeping operation and end those that aren’t making progress.
* Ask the African Union to pressure Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to end the violence and intimidation of southern Sudan and allow international observers for January’s referendum.
* Condemn any global airline tax that the UN is thinking of implementing to pay for climate change initiatives.
* Make clear that his administration will not become a signatory of the International Criminal Court until significant changes are made to satisfy Senate concerns and protect American personnel overseas.
* Correct the record with the UN press corps that First Lady Michelle Obama doesn’t think that being first lady is “hell,” but that she is actually very proud to represent the greatest country in the world.
These 10 proposals would go a far way in showing the UN that while the Obama administration is interested in seeking a kinder, gentler world, it will not allow a further retreat of democracy and human rights just to get along with others.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

I know, I know. Coons is 11 points ahead. O’Donnell’s dabbled in witchcraft. She’s said masturbation’s like adultery and mice have fully functioning human brains. Also: “Wives must graciously submit to a servant lead, and that is God’s design for the family”. (Some Republican voters will go for that.) Then there’s the Tolkien women obsession.
It was probably a smart move with some Republican voters to cancel “Fox News Sunday” and “Face the Nation” at the last minute. Church and a picnic in a county where she already has solid backing were the given reasons, not because she wasn’t prepared to go on the shows. Right. Nothing to do with midnight picnics on satanic altars.
How do crazy Christine’s issues, as she’s spoken about them and as they’ve been reported, sit with Republicans? I went to her sanitized web site, but it’s hard to get your head around the “Why Christine” page. Generic platitudes, pablum, Tea Party 101. There is NO section for education; it slides in under Values. Maybe she forgot it along with her tuition. Someone should ask her if she wants to eliminate the Department of Education. There’s a section for guns, though.
Let’s start with God. O’Donnell has said that there’s as much if not more evidence supporting creationism than evolution. As far as I know, she hasn’t supplied any (because it doesn’t exist?). Republicans agree with O’Donnell. Only 30% believe in evolution, while 60% of independents believe in evolution, according to Gallup. I don’t think independents are voting on God this year.
(Bill Clinton probably killed Vince Foster.)
Health care. O’Donnell wants to repeal the health care law. She also wants “less government meddling in the doctor/patient relationship”. (So she should love recess appointed Donald Berwick, the new head of Medicare and Medicaid, who advocates “patient-centered care” – and rationing and death!) 79% of Republicans favor repeal and 57% of non affiliated voters, so that’s a winner. Oh, she wants to create health care vouchers for veterans (no longer on her website – hmm, sounds like eliminate the Department of Veterans Affairs). Chris – that last one’s going down in flames.
(Joe Biden tapped her phone line.)
Obama’s “so liberal that he’s anti-American”! Of course he is. A Harris (online) poll found 41% of Republicans think the President’s anti-American, and 24% of Republicans think he’s the Anti-Christ. Christine O’Donnell’s in great company. Dick “the Feet” Morris thinks Obama might be anti-American, and Rep Michele (the gift that just keeps giving) Bachmann (R) MN, said in 2008 that she was very concerned Obama might have anti-American views. Now she says “I look like Nostradamus”. A voting issue? It is if Republicans vote on values.
(America is now a Socialist economy.)
Abortion. O’Donnell “strongly believes in protecting the sanctity of life at ALL stages”. She’s against abortion and stem cell research. She thinks condoms are “anti-human” and “will not protect you from AIDS”. A Gallup poll in 2009 showed the percentage of Republicans (including independents who lean Republican) calling themselves “pro-life” rose 10 points over the previous year. That’s huge. Will people vote on abortion? Some people only vote on abortion.
(It’s a misconception that you quote unquote can’t legislate morality.)
Security. No constitutional rights for terrorists or outsourcing our foreign policy to the UN. CNN polled in February after the Christmas day bombing, and 56% of respondents said the police and FBI agents should always inform suspects of their constitutional rights. 43% said not. I think O’Donnell’s on safe ground with this one. Her primary voters want to waterboard the ACLU, and she’ll probably pull in the rest of the black helicopter crowd and strong law and order voters in November.
(Women in military institutes cripple the readiness of our defense.)
Energy. Block cap and trade legislation. O’Donnell “supports a market based approach to energy solutions”. I don’t know what that means because it’s a meaningless statement. She says it will “keep competition high and energy prices low”. No mention of regulation of oil companies because – why regulate? A Pew poll in June showed that most Democrats (72%), independents (62%) and Republicans (59%) favor limits on CO2 and other emissions. She just has to keep shouting “tax” until November and she should do OK with Republicans and probably independents.
(Welfare and food stamps foster laziness and drug use.)
The question for depressed Democratic voters in Delaware is whether they’ll have the gumption to get up out of fetal positions in their basements long enough to go and vote for Coons. Maybe Elizabeth Warren will inspire them. Independents leaning Republican in Delaware have some serious thinking to do.
If she’s smart, and if Coons isn’t, Christine O’Donnell may be able to spin herself like Linda Blair and say she’s grown out of all the crazy stuff. After all, her positions on the issues above are solid to far right Republican, if you take out the witchcraft, the mouse brains, the hobbits, the wanking (and Britney Spears – on which she’s not wrong).

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Ever start doing a jigsaw puzzle, know you have all the pieces but can’t quite seem to
get them to look like the quaint, snow covered cottage photo on the box? Conflicting feelings of frustration and determination set in and you slowly start piecing the pieces together. This is how I feel about creating a sustainable world. The people and ideas are out there, but when everyone is working separately its just a jumbled mess. In order to create a cohesive vision of this future, we have to come together, and connect the pieces to see the big picture.
This is what the Connecting for Change conference is all about- People coming together to share their knowledge and connect for a better tomorrow. For three days in late October, New Bedford, MA becomes the place where all of the pieces can come together. The idea is that by combining forces, we can make the world a better place for everyone to enjoy. Can you be there?
The speakers include Greg Mortenson, Van Jones, Annie Leonard and many more. The workshops range from Uninhibited joy, to food and water systems, to movement building so there is really something for everyone. When all of these pieces work together, will have created the change we want to see in our world.
Together, we can put the puzzle pieces together and really have an impact on the world. The Connecting for Change conference is a frame where you can see where your piece fits into the puzzle. It is being held October 22-24 in New Bedford, MA. Get your tickets here.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

On the surface Park51′s Islamic cultural centre is controversial for two reasons: concern about the location, and plans for a September 11, 2011 groundbreaking. However, the real reason for the controversy is simple.
Al Qaeda has done such a good job of alienating Muslims and America from each other that most Americans simply don’t know that Muslims could be their strongest allies in the war on terror.
Some right-wing media question Muslim loyalty. A recent article in The American Thinker concluded, “If moderate Muslims do exist, then it behooves them to fight the American traitors among us. If American Muslims continue to reflect a conflicted relationship with their country, putting Islam above all else, then other Americans will rightly conclude that a civil war is upon us — one that al-Qaeda is steadfastly perpetrating.”
But are Muslims really so conflicted? The answer is no.
A 2007 Pew Research poll found that America’s Muslims are “largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.”
According to the Council on Foreign Relations records, “Members of Islamic communities have worked to establish good relationships with U.S. officials, particularly on the local level … Most of the major successes the government claims within the United States have actually involved cooperation with the local Muslim communities.”
Ideology is not a barrier to Islamic-American integration. Both societies were founded on the belief that God demanded His believers create a just society. The Constitution of Medina, Muhammad’s flagship city, created a bi-religious society with equivalent rights and responsibilities for both Jews and Muslims. Jerusalem under Muhammad’s followers had religious freedom for all.
Religious pluralism is a central value to both America and Muhammad’s Islam. And Muhammad’s example is being used worldwide to challenge and correct extremist Muslim views.
Muslims who hold extremist views, dubbed “the cheering section for Jihad” by President Obama’s Muslim advisor Dalia Mogahed, are easily countered by enlightened Muslim teachers drawing on their more informed and accurate interpretation of the meaning and intent of misunderstood Quranic verses and early Muslim tales.
For example, the Christians of Najran and the Monastery of St. Catherine were promised protection and freedom “for those who adopt Christianity both near and far” by Muhammad, and Muhammad made his promises binding on Muslims to the end of time.
Even Saudi Arabia is beginning to change (in part due to North American Muslim pressure), although their human rights record remains troubling. However, there are troubles closer to home.
Newt Gingrich has proclaimed, “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.” Rather than ensuring America’s tradition of religious pluralism in the face of foreign failures, Mr. Gingrich seeks to emulate them.
In the end, whether a mosque is built anywhere in lower Manhattan will be a matter for the property owner and the zoning laws of lower Manhattan to decide. I’m sure another opinion would be another opinion too many. However, the growing controversy over the future of Islam in America, and the future of America’s constitution, are different matters entirely.
As an outside observer who loves both Islam and America, I would like to share some advice.
Muslims the world over have repeatedly condemned terrorism but haven’t always been clear on the details. Do we condemn the terrorists, their methods, or their goals? How should Muslims resolve conflicts, or strive for a better world? What form would that world take? If Muslims love America, is it because of our Islam, or in spite of it?
And when America’s Muslims have answered those questions, America often hasn’t listened. Instead of allowing America’s Muslims to define themselves by their honest words and actions like every other American, America’s non-Muslims have listened to the lies of al Qaeda and Islamophobes alike, and given in to fear.
The simple truth is this: America’s founding values of faith and freedom are also Islam’s founding values. And both Americans and America’s Muslims will defend those values and their neighbors with their lives.
In Canada, our imams have issued a countrywide declaration rejecting false and radical interpretations of Islam, and committing to teach Muhammad’s Islam promoting pluralism, gender equity and the right of an individual to choose how he or she lives, dresses, acts and believes. And Muslim communities are reaching out to non-Muslim communities, seeking ways to grow communities together by working together for the common good, building common ground.
It’s funny, but despite all that, Canada’s Muslims have better relations with the U.S. than we do with our own government, because our government is focused on Muslims in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, many of America’s best Muslim leaders primarily serve the U.S. by building bridges to Muslims overseas. That work is important: our world is shrinking, and we need to learn to get along, but we should all pay attention to the quality of the bridges closer to home, too.
Once those bridges are wide and strong enough, the idea of a mosque at Ground Zero won’t be controversial at all, whether it happens or not.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Native Americans have long faced police harassment, illegal voter challenges, and election-day chaos on the way to the polls in South Dakota. Those problems may soon be over on the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. That’s because South Dakota has no clear plan to provide any voting at all in this fall’s election.
The imminent disenfranchisement of thousands of voters follows resignations of officials in the off-reservation county that handled outsourced, non-tribal government services, including elections, for Pine Ridge’s Shannon County. However, the crisis may also have arisen because Oglalas, members of the nation’s most marginalized ethnic group, have emerged as deciders in South Dakota elections — as have tribes in other areas since 2000, when Native support helped send Washington state’s Maria Cantwell to the U.S. Senate. With Shannon County voters turning in the nation’s highest Democratic performance in recent presidential elections, sidelining them is a game-changer in close contests, including this year’s race for the state’s sole Congressional seat, held by Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.
South Dakota’s head election official, Secretary of State Chris Nelson, has taken a hands-off approach to the problem, saying the counties involved should solve it. If they don’t, said Attorney General Marty Jackley, who’s up for re-election, “the state will weigh the need to take action.”
“What if the counties don’t work it out? What’s the state’s plan B?” asked South Dakota Democratic Party head Erin McCarrick. She accused the Republican-controlled state administration, including Nelson and Jackley, of “foot-dragging” as the election gets underway Sept. 20 with early voting. This year, Oglalas had hoped for the full six weeks of this convenient and widely popular type of advance polling. Early voting has seldom been provided in Native communities, but when it has, as many as 46 percent of voters have used it.
Here’s the background: As required by Shannon County’s charter, its commissioners contract out functions such as collecting taxes, issuing license plates, and running elections to officials of a neighboring district. For years, that district has been Fall River County. Then, during a raucous Sept. 3 meeting, monitored by plainclothes officers sent by Jackley, Fall River officials quit, saying they did so to protest the commissioners firing a sheriff. In giving notice, the officials also demolished Shannon County’s government infrastructure.
Maybe it’s good that somewhere along the line Fall River County lost its AK-47 (a big gun, for those unfamiliar with firearms). “I’ve looked all over for it,” said a departing Fall River official. “Now, I’m not even sure we owned one.” Meanwhile, a judge has reinstated the sheriff with a writ of quo warranto (Latin for “who put you in charge?”), an obscure legal maneuver devised in 13th-century England.
Back to the 21st century: Secretary of State Nelson says he can’t provide a substitute election officer; and he isn’t shaking loose Help America Vote Act funds to facilitate a full-fledged Shannon County election. Instead, he’s promoting mail-in absentee ballots as a solution.
“Right. Let ‘em eat cake,” said Greg Lembrich, legal director of nonpartisan voting-rights group, Four Directions, and an attorney at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. “Folks on reservations don’t have easy access to the photocopiers or notaries needed to apply for and complete mail-in ballots.”
And there’s no election official, so no one to collect and count the ballots, added O.J. Semans, Four Directions’ executive director and a Sicangu Lakota from Rosebud Sioux Reservation. “Native people aren’t asking for anything special here. We just want equal access to voting.” He called the commotion over the sheriff a distraction that allowed the state to pull a rabbit out of the hat: Presto, no voting for Oglalas.
South Dakota’s own constitution guarantees equal suffrage, Lembrich said. He also pointed to the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment: “It requires states to provide equal protection under the law. It doesn’t go on to say, ‘unless states delegate authority to counties, in which case the states can wash their hands of the issues.’”
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice says it’s on the case. Last April, DOJ produced a stern document designed to end the mosh pit of Shannon County elections. Among many provisions, poll workers can’t make “inappropriate comments” and must provide Lakota-language voting materials when needed.
“That’s all irrelevant if it’s impossible to vote,” said Semans. “And if you don’t vote, you don’t have a place at the table.”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Recently I was at a basketball camp at HAX Gym in L.A. I happened to notice two little kids, middle school age, practicing on the court next to me. They were putting each other through drills, encouraging each other when one of them missed a shot, or mishandled the ball, or messed up in the drill. They were having a great time. After I finished my workout, my trainer Laron Profit wanted to put me through a series of sprints. I asked the little boys if they wanted to run with me and they enthusiastically agreed. Eyes wide, and full of youthful exuberance, while I was dragging and honestly dreading doing these sprints. Well, we did the sprints and afterwards, they sat around talking with me for a little while, asking me question after question. They asked if I thought the Lakers were going to win again, how good did I think Miami was going to be, who was the toughest to guard, and about five different Kobe Bryant questions. So i started asking them questions about themselves. They told me their names were Steve* and C.J.* (*changed to protect their privacy), they were in middle school and they were best friends. In fact, they emphasized that they were so close that they might as well have been brothers. They told me that they wanted to attend Mira Costa High School together and that they were always going to be best friends forever. After we finished talking, they went back to their drills, and I just watched them encouraging each other and giving each other high fives when one of them scored. It was really a beautiful sight. Oh, I didn’t mention that one was Arabic the other was Jewish.
It was really a beautiful sight watching these little kids from completely different backgrounds who didn’t see race or at all. I really had never seen that, besides at a Seeds Of Peace Camp where Israeli and Palestinian kids are forced to play together — but this was different. These kids kept describing themselves as brothers. But I wondered how long these kids will be able to exist in their happiness before society messes up their thinking? Before society makes them aware of issues that couldn’t be further from their young minds. In essence, before society ruins them.
Later that day, I read a story where a swastika was actually painted on a mural of the first Israeli-born player in the NBA Omri Casspi (now twice defaced). This didn’t happen in Germany, or back in the 50s, this was in downtown Sacramento in 2010. It is unbelievable that acts of hate such as this could happen in this day and age.
I remember after 9/11 there were multiple hate crimes against Muslims and anyone who was perceived as being Muslim as if they are all in agreement with the hijackers in 9/11. Within a few days of the attacks there was an abundance of events.
A Sikh owner of a gas station in Arizona was killed as was a Lebanese clerk at another station. Close to Dallas, Texas, a man murdered a Pakistani man who owned a small grocery store. In Cleveland, Ohio, a man used his Ford Mustang as a weapon and plunged into an Islamic Center. Event after event like these were occurring. Senseless killings and terror. After a while, the hate crimes slowed down, but recently this new crave called Islamaphobia began to bring acts of hate back.
A New York taxi driver Ahmed Sharif was attacked by a passenger after being questioned if he was a Muslim. He was actually stabbed multiple times, slashed across his face, neck and hands.
Islamaphobia was sweeping across the nation. It was making what should have been a time to remember the people who lost their lives during 9/11, into a hate-filled, politicized, discriminatory extravaganza. This was all prompted by the proposed building of a Muslim community center, that has a mosque on one of the floors, near the site of Ground Zero. Not on top of it, but a few blocks away. A recent poll stated that 70% of the country wants this community center built somewhere else. In fact, Donald Trump even offered to buy the Imam who was planning to build the community center out. That made me think of the “welcoming committee” who wanted to buy out the black family in A Raisin In The Sun when they wanted to move into the all-white neighborhood.
There have also been protests and hate-filled rhetoric spewed from the mouths of many political figures across party lines. Unfortunately, that discrimination turns out to be what brings about the non-partisanship that President Obama has been so desperately trying to achieve. A recent poll showed that 54 percent of Democrats were also opposed to the community center being built. Muslims in general have been treated like the enemy across party lines.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said: “We can’t let the Nazis put up a building next to the Holocaust Museum.”
Rudy Giuliani called the community center a “desecration.”
Democratic Rep. John Hall, a two-term incumbent, released in a statement that freedom of religion was essential to democracy but that he hoped the project would be constructed elsewhere.
Democratic Rep. Mike McMahon also said that he hoped it would be moved:
Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), launched a “Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!” (SIOA ‘s associate director is Robert Spencer, who makes his living writing and speaking about the evils of Islam. SIOA called the community center, the “911 monster mosque.”
Republican New York Congressman Peter King, stated:
Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), a potential presidential candidate:
I’m strongly opposed to the idea of putting a mosque anywhere near Ground Zero — I think it’s inappropriate. I believe that 3,000 of our fellow innocent citizens were killed in that area, and some ways from a patriotic standpoint, it’s hallowed ground, it’s sacred ground, and we should respect that. We shouldn’t have images or activities that degrade or disrespect that in any way.
Florida Pastor, Terry Jones, who has received way too much attention in my opinion, actually threatened to burn copies of the Quran on 9/11. What has happened to our society?
After hearing all of this, I thought to myself, do these proponents of this community center and anyone else who agrees with them not understand that not all Muslims are with al Qaeda?
Do they understand that many Muslims (around five dozen) also lost their Muslim family members at Ground Zero? Furthermore, there are more than 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Does it make any sense to discriminate against all of them for the actions of 19? Or as Michael Moore recently asked in his open letter in favor of the community center being built:
“Blaming a whole group for the actions of just one of that group is anti-American. Timothy was Catholic. Should Oklahoma City prohibit the building of a Catholic Church near the site of the former federal building that McVeigh blew up?”
Of course everyone has the right to protest, don’t get me wrong. Even the Klu Klux Klan has a constitutional right to assemble, march, protest and have rallies of hate. But what message are we sending the world? That it’s OK to blame an entire religion, culture or nationality for the actions of a few? That discrimination is acceptable as long as we can come up with a justification? That someone’s religion should dictate how they are treated? I think Mayor Bloomberg said it best:
The Community Center can and must be built at the Park51 site… Anything less would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom… If we do not practice what we preach abroad- if we do not lead by example — we undermine our soldiers — we undermine our foreign policy objectives and we undermine our national security.
Looking at all of this I thought back to Steve and C.J. Two innocent kids, from completely different backgrounds. Playing a game that can unite races, cultures, nationalities and religions. Best friends. They didn’t enter this world hating those who are different — they appear to be completely color blind. They kept describing each other as brothers. Racism is a learned trait, and these two appear to be completely oblivious to it. But the question is how long will it be before society takes their innocence away from them.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Yesterday, at a lovely book event at the home of Terry Gilman, owner of the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego, I participated in an event called “author speed dating.” I think Terry may have made up this term and concept. It was crazy, but fun. There were 5 authors present. We were each assigned a different place in the house — the backyard patio, the living room, the library, the kitchen. The “audience” split into 5 groups and spent 7 minutes with each of us. What can you do in 7 minutes? Give a condensed history of your career, give a condensed synopsis of your latest book, tell a couple (very) condensed stories about writing, and then answer approximately 1 question. The question each group came up with? What are you writing next. (Well, that’s not true. One woman in one group asked me how I do all I do. I told her the truth: my house is a wreck. I say no to things I wish I didn’t have to say no to. I don’t sleep enough.) As for how I answered what I was writing next? I told them that I had just abandoned an idea because it felt like too small a canvas (10 seconds.) I told them that another idea had leaped into the void (5 seconds.) I told them that I had no idea whether or not it was a good idea, or a viable idea, or an idea that I would stick with, but that it was the idea that was currently winning the race for prominence in my mind. (10 seconds.) The speed of this communication, repeated 5 times in an hour, made it seem perfectly natural to abandon one idea for anovel and take up another. After all, it only took 25 seconds.
In the last group, however, we spent a full minute — quite a lavish amount of time — talking about a child’s game called Snail’s Pace Race. It’s a simple game in which the snails race to the finish. You roll a dice and move the designated number of spaces. The goal is to bet on which snail will get to the finish first. So all the snails are moving, and all the snails cross the finish lines, but only one gets there first. I explained that this game was precisely the visual I have for all the ideas in my head. Each idea is on the board, moving at its own speed. Each idea will cross the finish line. But some ideas simply move forward more quickly than others.
So this morning, I worked with a new idea– one that hasn’t had the chance to move very far down the board yet. I spent three hours today writing one paragraph. It’s one paragraph that describes my new novel idea. I kept changing the character’s names, and going onto Google to look them up. I kept changing the title, searching the dictionary and thesaurus for better words, more precise words, more rhythmic words. I did all of this as a way to circle around my new idea — to try to see it, know it, understand it. I’m not there yet, but I can feel something coalescing, some kind of heat. Maybe this is the idea I’ll take up and over the finish line.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

No matter the weather outside, you can effectively exercise in your living room. To assist Americans in developing a personal exercise program, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a guide that suggests that adults should start with two and a half hours of medium-intensity exercise each week, and increase to five hours as they’re able.
Speed Walking
Clear away any furniture or other obstacles in your living room to maximize your floor area. Walk briskly around the perimeter of the room three times. Cross through the middle of the room. Then, walk around the room in the opposite direction. Repeat for 20 minutes. Change the pattern to your liking and room shape. Step with a lunge for more of a muscle-strengthening challenge, keeping your bent knee in line with your ankle at the maximum lunge point.
Squats
Stand with your legs hip-width apart or slightly wider. Focus on using your gluteal muscles, hamstrings and quads. Bend your knees, and sit back as if you are sitting in an imaginary chair. Keep your knees just behind your toes. Return to standing position. Repeat 12 to 20 times for two or more sets.
LIVESTRONG.COM: How to Do Chair Squats
Push-ups
Lie on your stomach and on the balls of your feet. Position your hands flat on the floor, shoulder-width apart. Keep your elbows in line with your rib cage. Push your entire body upward to a straight elbows position while hardening your core abdominal muscles and keeping you body in a rigid, straight position. As you rise and lower, count to 10 or 20; the slower you move, the more intense the workout. Start with two or more sets of 10 reps and increase to feel the burn each session.
LIVESTRONG.COM: Types of Push-Ups
Chair Triceps Dips
Find a stable piece of furniture that can support your weight without tipping over, such as the front edge of a sturdy chair. Squat with your back facing the chair and place your hands on the seat with your fingers facing forward. Keep your hands in line with the sides of your body and straighten your elbows to hold yourself up, keeping your feet flat on the floor. According to Fitness Magazine, the ideal position for a triceps dip is to bend your elbows 90 degrees and dip down until your upper arms are parallel to the floor and in line with your shoulders. Push back up to the starting position without locking your elbows when you straighten them. This completes one rep. Perform a minimum of one set of eight reps.
Sit-ups
Do classic sit-ups with your arms behind your head and clench your ab muscles as you rise, keeping your back straight. To exercise your lower abdomen, straighten your legs and lift them in the air perpendicular to your back as you sit up. For a more intense workout, lower your legs just above the floor. Do at least one set of 50 and increase to fatigue in future sessions.
LIVESTRONG.COM: How to Do Sit-Up Variations
References
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans
Fitness Magazine: Chair Dips
About this Author
Diana Gamble’s health-oriented articles have been published in magazines such as The Natural Journal since 2007. She earned certifications for massage therapy and nutritional consulting from the North Carolina School of Holistic Medicine. She graduated from the University of North Carolina-Asheville with a Bachelor of Arts in literature.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

I get a lot of new music at my daytime gig as the editor of a music website. So much that it’s impossible to keep up with all of it. In this digital overloaded world, I can’t even imagine how music fans with jobs that don’t involve surfing the web all day can keep up with all the good music out there.
With that in mind, URB has assembled a list of our fave new artists who people will be talking about this Fall. There easily could have been ten different acts on this list, but we feel confident about those chosen here.
Check out the rest at URB.com

Follow Joshua Glazer on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/urbmag

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

When I read my daughter Lori Berhon’s beautiful blog the other day, I realized with wonder how each of us had had such an emotional reaction to our walk down streets that spoke of years gone by. Streets that had left each of us, and others no doubt, with their own memories. How ironic that both of us had the need to write it down.
Originally I hadn’t thought of using my thoughts for my post on HuffPost, but then I thought it was something we should share — I, the mother, feeling my own thoughts, and my child remembering her own.
So here goes mine: As I made my way towards the local school to cast my vote in Tuesday’s New York Primary race, I breathed in the first fresh air of coming autumn and was filled with the wonder of life. I looked up to the sky, and smiled.
For the past few weeks, and for one of the very few times in my life, my body had failed me. I had awakened one morning with a sensation of a spinning in my head that wouldn’t stop. I had slowly made my way to my bathroom, holding on to whatever piece of furniture I passed. I washed my face with cold water, let the water run over my wrist and slowly made my way back to my bed. Hours later I found out that my blood pressure had elevated to a frightening number.
I had never had anything but either a little low blood pressure or normal blood pressure. This was so out of the ballpark. To say it frightened me would be more than true. I thought about what could have caused this, what was new in my life?
A year ago, my working career had come to an end. Was this the culprit that had been laying dormant for this past year?
I never try to think about my age. I’ve always felt that a number can determine not only your attitude about yourself, but how others treat you. I have always just wanted to be treated for me, not some woman who is no longer young. Although slim, I had the strength of woman much younger than myself. I had worked full time at a highly stressful job, and no one thought about my age, no one questioned, “Can she do it?” because I never gave the impression I couldn’t. I took such pride in how well I functioned, how little I asked of my children other than their love, and how little I really ever asked of anyone. I was STRENGTH. I didn’t need help. I was there to help you, not visa-versa. I was vital, attractive, smart, funny, caring, a person people could tell their problems to, and I think loving. I know I felt loving.
I had lost my mother when she was 64, my darling brother when he was 54 and my dad at 68. I had been the lucky one. And now without warning death reared its ugly head. I almost let these last few weeks of illness make me into the woman I didn’t want to be. I almost gave in to the number.
The other day I had I sat with tears running down my eyes listening to Paul Simon sing to Oprah on the opening show of her 25th year. Watching this last hour and the 300 special guests in her audience, all I could feel was the wish that I could have achieved something in my life a tiny bit as kind and generous and beautiful as this woman had done. I feel that my fears have now become so trivial.
Walking through the streets that morning, feeling the breeze in my face, made me so grateful to be alive. I was better, and I knew it. How did I know it? As soon as I finished voting, I walked into the office of the elementary school where I had once been the President of the Parents Association a long time ago, and asked if they needed any volunteers. They do.
All I needed to get better was to accept the fact that I am alive, still vital and can still contribute to this world. A number is just a number, and when mine is up, well so be it.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Islamophobia, the virulent strain of religious hatred that has been spreading like wildfire across the country, is set to put in an appearance at the Texas State Board of Education.
Given how politicized the Board has been, and given how members regularly focus on religion and politics rather than education, this certainly shouldn’t be surprising. But a lack of surprise doesn’t make the impending actions any less unsettling. Indeed, watching the Board move in this direction is very much like watching a car wreck in slow motion. All the players are in place, they’re heading for one another with the ensuing collision certain to yield dire consequences, and all you can do is sit there with your jaw dropped, hoping that what you’re seeing isn’t real.
In this case, it’s all too real. But, perhaps with enough public outcry, Board members will act to avert the impending disaster. Then again, this is the Board that ignored the advice of science experts when they crafted their science curriculum, making it ever-so-friendly to creationism, and this is the group that ignored the advice of social science experts when they opted to recast the state’s social science curriculum in stark political terms.
At the Board’s meeting on Sept. 22-24, it will take up a resolution that accuses social studies textbook publishers of “pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias.” The resolution makes three outlandish claims:
Textbooks used in Texas regularly contain “Politically-correct whitewashes of Islamic culture and stigmas on Christian civilization”;
Those same textbooks regularly offer students “Sanitized definitions of ‘jihad’ that exclude religious intolerance or military aggression against non-Muslims”; and
Those textbooks devote significantly more space to Islam than they do to Christianity.
The resolution also draws the troublingly xenophobic conclusion that “more such discriminatory treatment of religion may occur as Middle Easterners buy into the U.S. public school textbook oligopoly.”
As with so much else that the Texas State Board of Education has concluded over the years, the evidence simply doesn’t support its claims or its conclusion. The Texas Freedom Network (TFN), after undertaking an analysis of the books in question, has come to a very different set of conclusions. Perhaps the most striking and absolutely irrefutable point is that the textbooks referenced in the resolution are not currently being used in Texas classrooms, and they haven’t been for more than half a decade.
The books that are in use, those that have been approved for use by the Board, don’t do any of the things that the resolution claims. As a TFN blog post explains it, “the resolution grossly understates the amount of coverage textbooks give to Christianity. In fact, it ignores entire textbook sections that deal with Christianity, including chapters and passages on the Reformation, Christian influences during the Renaissance and on the political evolution of Europe, canon law and church reform.” TFN has similarly shown that contrary to the claims in the resolution, the texts discuss atrocities performed in the name of various religions, including both Christianity and Islam.
Unfortunately, the contingent on the Board apparently behind the resolution is unlikely to be swayed by the facts, especially since they are being presented by the Texas Freedom Network. What, you ask, is the Texas Freedom Network? As its web page explains, “the Texas Freedom Network is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization of more than 45,000 religious and community leaders.”
But consider the position of Board member Ken Mercer, locked in a tight re-election fight against Rebecca Bell-Metereau. He has attacked TFN as “an ultra-liberal advocacy group.” What got him so worked up? TFN was opposed to Mercer’s position eviscerating the teaching of evolution in Texas schools. Mercer doesn’t need to listen to experts on evolution because he considers himself perfectly well versed on the subject. In the same op-ed piece in which he attacked TFN, he offered these infamous words as an explanation for a position that is in direct contradiction to that of the world’s scientific community: “[H]ave you ever seen a dog-cat, or a cat-rat?”
Or consider that Board member Cynthia Dunbar described TFN as “a horribly liberal organization.” Happily, Dunbar has opted not to run for re-election this year.
So, the strategy is likely to be to ignore the facts presented by TFN and, instead, to attack the messenger.
Finally, the conclusion that “Middle Easterners” are inherently more likely to produce biased textbooks is as nave from an economic standpoint as it is unsettling from an ethnic perspective. Beyond those obvious points, however, why is it that conservatives like those on the Board have gaping blind spots when it comes to the right-wing media? As Jon Stewart, among many others, has so humorously pointed out, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal is the second-largest shareholder of News Corp, the company that owns FOX News, and no one has accused FOX News of promoting an Islamic agenda.
Surely some of the Texas State Board of Education members pushing this resolution would realize that a Saudi Prince is a “Middle Easterner.” But, then again, given the bizarre positions Board members have taken in the past, I suppose there’s no reason to expect they might accept something that is so obvious to the rest of us.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has warned that a bid for for the country's fertiliser giant Potash Corporation may not be approved.
The firm is subject of a 39bn (26bn) hostile takeover bid from Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton.
There are also reports Chinese investors have approached a Canadian pension fund about a possible bid.
But Mr Harper said his government could block a takeover if it was not a “net benefit” to Canada.
He was speaking as BHP's chief executive Marius Kloppers visited Canada to try and build support for the deal.
Mr Kloppers said he had no intention of raising his offer.
Saskatchewan, the Canadian province that is home to Potash, has said it is concerned that BHP may remove Potash from Canpotex, the offshore marketing arm of its potash producers.
This may drive down prices, and thus the royalties that Saskatchewan gets from potash sales, the state's government fears.
The state's Premier, Brad Wall, said he could see no benefit in the deal.
“We're going to be very careful and deliberate about this,” he told Reuters.
Potash – or potassium carbonate – is mined in the province and used for fertiliser production worldwide.
China is the world's second-biggest importer of the mineral, after India, giving it a motive for investing in the industry.

Source:BBC

Computer maker Hewlett-Packard (HP) has settled a lawsuit brought against former boss Mark Hurd as it tried to stop him joining rival Oracle.
Under the deal, Mr Hurd will give up about 30m (19.3m) in HP shares he was given in his severance package.
He joined the database software maker a month after leaving HP.
Mr Hurd would keep “obligations to protect HP's confidential information while fulfilling his responsibilities at Oracle”, the firms said.
Oracle announced the appointment of Mr Hurd as co-president earlier this month.
Mr Hurd, a friend of Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, was forced to quit HP after a sexual harassment investigation.
He denied any wrongdoing and a probe found that he had not broken harassment rules, but was in breach of HP's “standards of business conduct.”
HP had claimed that Oracle would gain “a strategic advantage as to where to allocate or not allocate resources and exploit the knowledge of HP's strengths and weaknesses” as a result of hiring Mr Hurd.
But it now said it was confident Mr Hurd could perform all his duties without revealing HP's trade secrets.
Oracle and Hewlett-Packard are closely linked as companies, having worked together for 25 years to ensure their products were compatible.
Major technology firms have spent the last few years trying to straddle hardware, software and data storage in a bid to remain relevant.
Oracle recently took over rival Sun Microsystems, while HP has fought off Dell to take over the data storage company 3Par.

Source:BBC

Pop singer Lady Gaga has led a rally against the “don't ask, don't tell” policy that prevents openly-gay people serving in the US military.
Under the policy, which President Obama has promised to repeal, gay people can serve but face expulsion if they reveal their sexuality.
The star appeared at the rally in Portland, Maine, particularly targeting the state's two Republican senators.
The pair are seen as pivotal in a crucial Senate vote on Tuesday.
A proposal to repeal the “don't ask, don't tell” policy is attached to a defence bill which the Democrats will try to bring to a vote this week.
They need 60 Senate votes on Tuesday to cut off debate and proceed to the bill.
Senators Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, of Maine, have yet to reveal their voting intentions and their votes may be necessary to avoid opponents using procedural delaying tactics.

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” – Apple CEO Steve Jobs as quoted in the book, The Journey is the Reward.
Steve, you made a mistake… a big one! Now admit it and get on with some other brilliant, paradigm -shifting innovations for which the world has come to know and idolize you.
For those of you who don’t spend your time combing US Patent Office filings, Apple recently filed a patent for “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device.” (” http://bit.ly/bF21qP) That may sound mind-numbingly dull but what it means is that Apple wants to patent a method of determining who is using one of their products. The patent explains how Apple would seize control of a product (like, perhaps one of the 50 million iPhones out there, for instance) and use it to take a picture of the current user of the phone, or record their voice, or measure their heartbeat. Apple says it would only use this information to ensure that the person using the product is the correct user, and that the product had not been tampered with or stolen.
Let’s recap–Apple wants to take a picture of you without you knowing about it and without it making a sound on the phone wherever the phone may be. Apple wants to record your voice when you are not even talking on the phone. Pardon me while I say, HOLY #@!^@
Let’s give Apple the benefit of the doubt that this technology will not be used to to spy on us and collect incredibly valuable marketing information. Let’s believe that Apple plans to only use this technology for its stated purpose, to ensure that their products are being used properly. Even that would be insulting and a horrible invasion of privacy. When I buy a product, it is mine to do with as I please. If I want to mess with the insides of my TV, Sony doesn’t deactivate the TV. If I want to tinker with my car, GM doesn’t take the car away from me.
Apple’s business objective in hatching this Orwellian innovation is to prevent people from “jailbreaking” iPhones. Jailbreaking is a process of unlocking the operating system of an iPhone, allowing users to download apps that have not been approved by Apple (and are not paying exorbitant fees to Apple). It is estimated that perhaps 10% of all iPhones have been jailbroken. So, Apple wants to spy on those 5 million people and, perhaps, disable their phones permanently.
And that is about the nicest possible use for this technology. Apple’s patent has some truly terrifying implications. What if someone at Apple decided to use this technology for other purposes?
Take the case of David Barksdale, a 27-year-old engineer who was working for one of Google’s elite technical groups when he decided to use his position to start spying on 4 teenagers. He listened in on their phone conversations over Google Voice. He accessed transcripts of their private chats. He looked up their contact lists and read their emails sent through Gmail. In one case he threatened a 15-year-old boy to coerce him into divulging the name of the boy’s girlfriend.
Google says it has fired Barksdale and will look into enhancing its security controls regarding employees of the company. However, it says it is necessary for some employees to have access to your most private data for Google’s systems to operate properly.
This episode reflects more than the misdeeds of a single rogue employee dabbling in cyber-stalking. Even if corporations do not have nefarious motives when they create invasive technology to spy on us, their employees can use that technology to gain access to our most intimate secrets. And once an innovative technology gets patented, it is simply a matter of time before the technology gets licensed to others and competitors begin development efforts of their own.
And that is why Apple’s plan to monitor our heartbeats, track our voices, and take pictures of us is so disturbing. These data points being collected covertly aren’t just credit cards or pin numbers – but pieces of me. Is there anything more sacred than that?
Jeffrey Evans is the CEO of TigerText, a text messaging service that offers and promotes increased privacy standards in communication.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The “Shimano Problem” and its recent resolution make this an opportune time to briefly explore the subject of Buddhism’s integration into the West. Eido Shimano Roshi had been the abbot of the New York Zen Studies Society, one of the oldest Buddhist institutions in the West, and its 1,400-acre Dai Bosatsu retreat in the Catskills until he resigned from both earlier this week. Even though he’s headed the institute since 1965 and is 77 years old, he isn’t retiring. This comment below, posted at the Tricycle Buddhist magazine blog in reaction to the apology that accompanied his announcement, gives you an idea of what transpired.
Yes, the Achilles heel of gurus, abbots, and pastors everywhere: sleeping with their students and/or worshipers. Before we explore its prevalence in Buddhist America, let’s take a moment to celebrate “how the swans came to the lake,” to borrow the title of a history of the Zen Buddhism diaspora, if you will, in the United States by Rick Fields (Shambhala, 1992).
Since Buddhism originated in India and moved east to China and then Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia, it was probably as inevitable a migration across the Pacific as Homo erectus following the game out of Africa and populating Asia and Europe. Also, because Eastern teachers were often stuck with students sent to them by their families, they were happy to find students in the West who, stoked in part by American traditions such as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalism, sought out the teachers on their own and were eager to initiate practice.
Of course, the extent to which Buddhism needed to be Westernized became a central issue. American Buddhist centers may appear to have integrated East and West seamlessly, but many obstacles were surmounted during their formative years. Looking back, rituals, practice, and teachings may have been the least of it. Instead, due to mixed signals between the two cultures and, however much a cliché, culture shock on the part of the Easterners, many American students wound up emotionally and spiritually wounded by Buddhist teachers — Eastern and American. Additionally, of course, the good names of the most highly regarded forms of Buddhism in America, Tibetan and Zen, were sullied.
Perhaps the most notorious perpetrator of spiritual abuses was Trungpa Rinpoche, who, while still a teenager, headed several large Tibetan monasteries until, like the Dalai Lama, he was forced out by the 1959 Chinese invasion. Once in the West, his gift for teaching facilitated the founding of what has become known as the Vajradhatu (his U.S. meditation centers), Shambhala Meditation Centers around the world, and the Naropa Institute (now University). But his hedonistic lifestyle and provocative “crazy wisdom” both mystified and alienated.
Trungpa died a grisly alcoholic’s death, but his successor was arguably even more dissolute. The claim to fame of Osel Tendzin, an American from New Jersey, was not only seducing students, but becoming infected with HIV and failing to tell those with whom he engaged in sexual behavior. This scenario was paralleled by two American Zen teachers: the womanizing Richard Butler, the abbott of the San Francisco Zen Center, and his successor, Reb Anderson, who gained fame by appropriating the gun from a suicide victim and later wielding it in public.
As for Shimano, his serial philandering was a source of concern for decades to long-time colleague Roshi Robert Aitken, who recently died. At the Zen Site, Vladimir K. and Stuart Lachs illuminated a series of letters from Aitken to Shimano and others in the Zen community, including two of Japan’s most venerated roshis who had been his teachers. Only much later was one of them inclined to condemn Shimano. Watch how the culture clash played out in this instance (emphasis mine):
In a 1990 piece titled Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America that’s as nuanced as you’ll find on the subject, the culture clash was elucidated by Katy Butler. (If you haven’t done so yet, read her recent, powerful New York Times magazine piece that begins with her mother speaking with her about her father: “Please help me get Jeff’s pacemaker turned off.”) Upon arriving in the United States, Eastern teachers found a nation already predisposed to hero worship and religious hucksterism. Here Ms. Butler writes about what keeps Eastern teachers in line back home until they arrive on these shores and act like a kid in a candy store.
“Pressure from the community is very important in controlling behavior in Tibetan communities,” said Dr. Barbara Aziz, an internationally known social anthropologist … who has spent 20 years doing fieldwork among Tibetans. … “In Tibetan society, they expect more of the guy they put on the pedestal … [I]f such a scandal [as Osel Tendzin's] had happened in Tibet [he] might have been driven from the valley.”
Furthermore, Aziz pointed out, Tibetans may “demonstrate all kinds of reverence to a [teacher], but they won’t necessarily do what he says.” She concluded, “I see far more discernment among my Tibetan and Nepali friends than among Westerners” (emphasis mine). She continued:
Alan Roland, a psychoanalyst and author of In Search of Self in India and Japan … believes that Asian students approach the teacher-student relationships more subtly than Americans — who often commit rapidly and completely, or not at all. Asian students may display deference, but withhold veneration, until they have studied with a teacher for years. They seem to have a “private self” unknown to many Americans, which is capable of reserving judgment even while scrupulously following the forms. When a teacher fails, Asians may continue to defer to his superior rank but silently withdraw affection and respect.
In America, it’s often the reverse. Some Vajradhatu students could forgive Osel Tendzin as a human being, but could not treat him as a leader. … [F]ew Americans can show deference to someone they don’t venerate without feeling hypocritical. Faced with this cognitive dissonance, they either abandon deference and leave, or they deny inner feelings.
Ms. Butler then quotes the current Dalai Lama.
“I recommend never adopting the attitude toward one’s Spiritual teacher of seeing his or her every action as divine or noble. … if one has a teacher who is not qualified, who is engaging in unsuitable or wrong behavior, then it is appropriate for the student to criticize that behavior.”
Finally, a couple of random observations about the issues teachers in Eastern traditions sometimes have with power and sex:
1) The sheer immaturity they’re manifesting is breathtaking. Either they’re resisting the transformation that long hours of meditation should be impressing on them or, in the belief that they’re fully realized, or enlightened, they think that they’re beyond the effects of bad karma on their future as souls.
2) It goes without saying that these problems are all but nonexistent in woman-led sanghas and zendos.
A version of this post first appeared at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

(Originally published on truthout.org)
Over the Labor Day weekend, the Perdido Bay Mullet Festival in Lillian, Alabama had to do something it’s never had to do before — substitute catfish for mullet. Why? Because, according to event organizer Bill Cornell, the company that supplies the mullet for the annual festival “didn’t feel good about the fish” and “won’t sell them for human consumption.” The seafood supplier, Wallace Seafood, had found unusual white spots on some of the mullet being caught, and won’t sell the fish until testing is completed to see if they’re safe to eat. According to the company’s Brent Wallace, “Mullet feed off the bottom and we don’t know what’s been down there.”
Another fisherman raised the same concern as Wallace Seafood — that mullet are bottom feeders so you don’t know what they’ve been eating — and added that because of their migratory nature, you also don’t know where they’ve been eating. This fisherman, nicknamed “Red,” who talked about the oil not being visible on the surface because the dispersants have made it sink down into the water, explained how mullet eat, sucking just about anything into what he called their “gizzard,” the black spot seen on the fish in the video below.
With the very unsurprising revelation reported by NPR last Monday that the oil from the BP oil spill isn’t gone, but has merely sunk to the sea floor, it’s no big leap to assume that the diet of these bottom-feeding, migratory fish is likely to include just about anything in that “fluffy and porous” layer of oil and “recently dead” things reported by Samantha Joye from the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia. As David Hollander of the University of South Florida is quoted as saying in the same NPR report, “A lot of fish go down to the bottom and eat and then come back up. And if all their food sources are derived from the bottom, then indeed you could have this impact.”
Bottom-feeding fish used as hog feed
Meanwhile, despite these concerns, bottom-feeding fish like mullet are currently being caught and eaten all over the Gulf, with the potential risk not being limited to direct human consumption of the fish, but indirectly by mullet being fed to hogs, as Dr. Norma Bowe of Kean University in New Jersey observed a few weeks ago. Striking up a conversation with some fishermen who were hauling in nets full of mullet from a pier in Long Beach, Mississippi, Dr. Bowe found out that one of the men was also a hog farmer who was catching the mullet to feed to his hogs. The hog farmer, who said he fishes from this pier every day, proudly told Bowe to just ask anybody and they’d tell her that his bacon, pork chops, ham hocks, and ribs are the best around, attributing the high quality of the meat from his hogs to their high protein fish diet. And, according to the fishermen that Bowe spoke to, these fish are also used in a variety of other products for both human and pet consumption — from Omega-3 fish oil supplements to cat food. Part of this conversation was caught on video by one of Bowe’s students.
Photos taken by Bowe and her students while this hog farmer was pulling in his catch show cleanup workers nearby in the background, obviously indicating that there was something very close to this pier in need of cleaning up. And, according to Bowe, the rocks under the pier were visibly coated with oil, which can clearly be seen in additional photos. Yet this pier is open for fishing. Was what Dr. Bowe and her students observed at this pier in Long Beach an isolated incident? Not according to “Red,” who has kept in touch with Bowe since her trip. “Red” reported finding crabs filled with oil just over a week ago at another pier in nearby Gulfport, which is also open for fishing.
Is the use of mullet as livestock feed an unusual practice? Not at all. Besides local hog farmers catching their own mullet to feed their own hogs, fish meal made from this type of fish is a common ingredient in commercially produced feed for both livestock and poultry, as well as feed for farm-raised seafood.
The initial concern of Dr. Bowe, who holds a Ph.D. in Community Health Policy, was the same as most other health professionals — the long term health effects of exposure to the oil and chemicals that people are coming in contact with: “My concern is for the public’s health. We know that short term exposure to the chemicals found in crude oil can cause skin rashes and lesions, headaches, fatigue, dizziness, and upper respiratory issues such as infections. Less is known about long term exposure, however benzene — a chemical contained in crude oil — is considered a carcinogen.” But, after the discovery that these same chemicals may be entering the food supply indirectly through livestock, Bowe added that studies of chemicals entering the food supply are also necessary: “Long term exposure studies are needed, as well as determining the effects if the chemicals reach the food supply.”
Is the FDA doing any special testing of this animal feed in the wake of the oil spill? Apparently not. In fact, Shannon Cameron, an FDA Health Communications Specialist, denied that Gulf fish are even being fed to livestock. In a message left in response to my question about whether or not testing was being done on the fish used in livestock feed, Cameron said, “I was forwarded your inquiry about Gulf fish being fed to livestock. It is not being fed to livestock.”
If Gulf fish are not being used for livestock feed, as Cameron asserts, then why would companies such as Omega Protein Corporation, which describes itself as “the nation’s largest manufacturer of heart-healthy fish oils containing Omega-3 fatty acids for human consumption, as well as specialty fish meals and fish oil used as value-added ingredients in aquaculture, swine and other livestock feeds,” be putting out press releases to its shareholders about the effects of the oil spill on its Gulf fishing operations? A June press release stated that “the Company’s Gulf of Mexico fish catch was 17 percent behind its Gulf of Mexico 2010 fish catch plan,” so the other 83 percent of its planned Gulf catch was obviously being caught.
The fish used by Omega Protein Corporation is menhaden, a forage fish which, like the mullet, has a filtering system. Prior to the BP oil spill, the biggest concern about menhaden was that their numbers were becoming so depleted because of their use in Omega-3 fish oil and livestock feed. In short, menhaden are a natural water filter, with each adult fish capable of filtering several gallons of water per minute, clearing the water of excess algae to allow the sunlight to get to oxygen producing undersea plant life. One can only guess what the menhaden in the Gulf are now filtering out of the water there.
Numerous samples now at Kean University for independent testing
Backing up a bit to explain how Kean University became involved in collecting samples from the Gulf, it all started in July, when Dr. Bowe and a group of students from the university’s Be the Change group took a trip to New Orleans to help an elderly woman whose home had been in need of repairs and painting since Hurricane Katrina. Months earlier, while planning this trip, the oil spill happened, so the students decided that after completing their volunteer project in New Orleans, they would spend a few days in the the area affected by the spill, volunteering to help with the cleanup. By July, however, the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command had seized control of volunteer efforts from the organizations that had been recruiting volunteers, so the group’s plan to volunteer through an organization they had contacted back in May was off. Undeterred, the students simply asked around and found the nearest beach where a cleanup effort was underway, still hoping to find a way to help. The beach they ended up on was in Pass Christian, Mississippi.
The disparities between what the group observed on this beach in July and what they were hearing from official sources made Bowe decide that she had to go back to find out what was really going on. So, on August 26, she returned, accompanied by two of the students from the first trip, Kayla Duncan and Nicolette Maggio. This time, Bowe was on a mission to collect samples for testing. And collect samples she did — over sixty of them — evading the obstacles reported by others, such as the confiscation of samples collected on public beaches, run-ins with local law enforcement, and the blocking of access to research sites to prevent non-BP or non-government scientists from doing independent testing.
While some of Bowe’s success in collecting such a large number of samples, many from areas that few have been able to access, can be chalked up to sheer resourcefulness, much more must be attributed to her people skills. By simply spending a little time with local workers and fishermen, and showing them that she was in this for the long haul, Bowe and her students quickly found themselves on a boat with “Red,” being taken to areas where the fishermen — probably the best judges of what doesn’t look right — thought that testing should be done, and what in particular they want to see tested.
The wide variety of samples collected on this trip are now in a lab at Kean, with the testing being performed by a group of scientists made up of Dr. Jeffrey Toney, the university’s Dean of Natural, Applied, and Health Sciences, (who is already covering the effects of the spill at NJ Voices), and other members of the science faculty. While all handling of the samples has been restricted to faculty members, one student, Mario DaCosta, will be permitted to observe and assist. As one of the students on Be The Change’s first Gulf trip in July, DaCosta, a chemistry major, has earned the opportunity to see the project through by being in on the sample testing.
In addition to the scores of water, sand, soil, plant, and biological samples collected by Bowe and her students, the samples now at Kean for testing include a few from other sources. One of these came from a tackle shop owner who, while cleaning up the mess that was washing up behind his shop, was told that he wasn’t allowed to be handling what was behind his shop because he didn’t have the proper training to be handling hazardous materials. The shop owner kept a sample of what he had been cleaning up, holding onto it until he could put it into good hands, and those hands were Dr. Bowe’s.
What’s up with the Coast Guard?
On the first trip in July, the Kean University group was told by an employee from the company doing the cleanup of the Pass Christian beach that he had been alarmed by the hundreds (if not thousands) of dead jellyfish that were covering the beach. The employee had reported his concerns to the Coast Guard, but was told by a Coast Guard scientist that the oily substance being left on the beach by the dead jellyfish was just the natural organic matter left when jellyfish decompose. Not buying this explanation, one of the students, Benito Nieves, snuck a sample of the decomposing jellyfish mess into a water bottle, and, although anyone with a properly functioning nose could tell that the substance in this water bottle was full of oil, the sample was delivered to Dr. Toney.
But this wasn’t the only thing that raised questions about the Coast Guard among the Kean students. On July 31, while the group was on the Pass Christian beach, a Coast Guard photographer arrived to shoot photos of the workers. The students took numerous photos of this Coast Guard photographer during the ten minutes that he was posing and shooting his photos of two workers. The students photos, a few of which are below, show exactly where the Coast Guard photographer and workers were positioned throughout the photo shoot.
But, in the final photo posted on the Coast Guard website, the workers, one of whom appears to be hard at work stirring the crystal clear water with his shovel, are not standing where the students’ photos show them being posed and photographed. According to the date and time listed on the Coast Guard website for this photo, there is no question that this was the photo that the students witnessed and photographed the Coast Guard photographer taking. (The second student photo above shows where the photographer and workers were positioned at 1:04 p.m. The time on this Coast Guard photo is 1:05 p.m.)
(The original high res photo can be downloaded here.)
According to Bowe and her students, who had walked this entire stretch of beach, there was no place on this beach that looked anything like what appears in the Coast Guard photo. Here are some of the photos taken by the students, who, in addition to those already mentioned in this article, included Elissa Hyer, Alexandra Bastos, and Rebecca Bowe. This is what was on the beach right where the Coast Guard photographer was shooting his photo of the workers. (The video clip at the end pans around to show where the students took these photos in relation to the yellow boom where the Coast Guard photographer was positioned.)
Here’s another photo taken by the same Coast Guard photographer, on the same beach in Pass Christian a little earlier that same day, again showing crystal clear water and not a tar ball in sight.
(The original high res photo can be downloaded here.)
But look at this video, released by the Coast Guard itself. The video, of the same two workers, in the same spot, shot by the same photographer, on the same day, shows water and sand not nearly as clean as in the photo, with the workers finding numerous tar balls. As they say on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the other.”
That many Mississippians can’t be wrong
The towns mentioned in this article — Pass Christian, Long Beach, and Gulfport — are three towns right in a row within a few miles of each other. This is the same stretch of Mississippi’s coast reported on by Truthout in Monday 13 September 2010′s article “Evidence Mounts of BP Spraying Toxic Dispersants.” It would be almost redundant to report any more of what the fishermen who talked to the Kean University group said they’ve seen, because it would essentially just confirm much of what Truthout’s Dahr Jamail was told by Pass Christian residents Shirley and Don Tillman, and what many other Mississipians have been saying. Unless one of the effects of the oil spill has been collective hallucinations, what these people are reporting is what’s really happening.
One thing should be added, however, about those suspicious out of state boats in BP’s Vessels Of Opportunity (VOO) program, described by the Tillmans, which seem to be a subject of particular opprobrium to the local residents. These boats might not just have been brought in from other states, but from another country. Photos taken by the Kean students of one of these boats, on which little care was taken to completely cover up the boat’s prior information, show that this boat’s name was changed from the “Aarluk” to the “Sea Launch,” and “Biloxi” was slapped over “Upernavik.” Where is Upernavik? Well, that’s in Greenland.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

By Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos, Fletcher Jones Professor of Computational Physics, Dean College of Science ,Chapman University
In the first part of our review of The Grand Design we offered a response from the viewpoint of the general reader. But given the scientific esteem of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, we wanted to address their theory of creation, known as M-theory, in more technical terms. This is such an important debate that the interested reader will find much to ponder.
The authors of The Grand Design have tackled an age-old subject – the origins of the cosmos – which more recently became a public controversy with the whole intelligent design debate. They go even farther, claiming that M-theory will bring to an end the quest for a unified theory of physics. (They concede that “no one seems to know what the “M” stands for, but it may be “master”, “miracle”, or “mystery,”‘ rather a letdown when you propose to explain all that exists.) These are bold goals were they to be realized–M-theory would constitute a major revolution in humanity’s search for the meaning of cosmos (if any) and our role in it. However, it is our view that the book doesn’t add enough to resolve these grander issues. The basic reason is that Hawking and Mlodinow place their faith in physics to resolve ancient metaphysical questions, such as the need for a Creator, the existence of free will, and the relationship between mind and matter. But aside from that, what can be said about the science presented in The Grand Design?
Let’s look first at the foundation of their thesis. Hawking and Mlodinow implicitly accept the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH), which, according to Max Tegmark of M.I.T., states that there exists an external physical reality, completely independent of us humans. This is in reality a metaphysical statement since it relates to the nature of existence (being). The adherents of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics would reject the ERH on the grounds that there is no reality without observation. In other words, a human observer is woven into the fabric of science and perhaps of anything we can know about existence. We are not like children with our noses pressed against a bake shop window staring at what is behind the glass. We are part of the cosmic scenery, inseparable from what we see.
Quantum physics makes us focus not just on data but also on the way that we study the physical world, an interaction that forms an undivided whole. Actually, Hawking and Mlodinow seem to favor this view as well (as do most quantum physicists). They state, “The universe itself has no single history (our note, following Richard Feynman’s sum over histories approach in quantum field theory) nor even an independent existence.” This adheres to what John Wheeler of Princeton termed the role of observer-participant, the foundation of the Copenhagen interpretation. At the same time, however, The Grand Design supposes the independent existence of reality, or being. What is the role of observation, then? After decades of debate involving the greatest quantum physicists from Einstein on, the verdict is in: quantum mechanics is incompatible with local, realistic theories. Non-locality reigns supreme, and it holds that quantum events are connected across the cosmos, events that are realized through an observer. Space and time create local events, but non-locality defies our common sense notion that anything can be isolated in one place at a given time. The universe is stranger than that: if you tickle it here, it laughs over there.
Non-locality, as many physicists hold, may be the most profound discovery of modern physics, more so than M-theory. Non-locality is testable and has been tested in the laboratory; M-theory remains a speculation of cosmologists. It would have been good if Hawking and Mlodinow told us where they stand with respect to this issue. They do not say much about it although non-local reality is implied if one accepts many universes, as they do. What is the connection of non-locality to M-theory? For them to be silent on the most fundamental aspect of the quantum world, in a theory that purports to be the theory of everything, is a serious shortcoming.
In modern quantum theory, the building blocks of Nature are not static “things”, like pebbles or little billiard balls, but dynamic, dancing interactions of possibility waves. If that is correct, as it is generally agreed it is, then one can assert a transcendent realm. To call something a possibility wave is to call it a “potential.” A potential does not exist in space-time, it is actually the source of space-time. As such, the infinite transcendent presence from which space-time and all waves arise is the immeasurable potential of all that was, is and will be. As such, these waves of possibility allow an infinitely complex set of actualities to emerge. Hawking and Mlodinow remain ambiguous on an issue that could be the very crux of the matter.
Many physicists are puzzled by the value of the so-called “constants” of nature and the fine tuning required (not just in cosmology) to have the present universe as it is. Staggering fine tuning from 1 part in 10 to the power 50 are required to account for the current, observable universe, such as the homogeneity of the universe (i.e. having a more or less constant density at early times) and the isotropy (i.e. looking the same in all directions, as for example indicated by the cosmic background radiation), as well as the cosmological constant, which was formulated and then rejected by Einstein but now is back in vogue.
Hawking and Mlodinow, in keeping with the vast majority of physicists, want to preserve the constancy of physical laws as well as the fundamental principle that randomness rather than design prevails in Nature. Cosmologists have thus devised the multiverse theory that Hawking and Mlodinow favor. It proposes other universes to explain why our universe came to be perfectly fine-tuned for conscious life to exist. The reasoning goes like this: if there were a very, very large number of different physical laws and/or physical constants in all these universes, some of them would have laws that were suitable for stars, planets and life developing on these planets to exist.
Our particular universe would then seem unique when in fact it wasn’t. Human life would still be random, even though fine-tuning makes it mathematically improbable–to say the least–that random swirling gases gave rise to life with such precision. But if you can afford to throw out billions upon billions of universes, improbabilities don’t matter. On the other side is the theory that human beings cannot help but be the focus and end result of cosmic evolution. This theory is based on the so-called anthropic principle, which comes in two varieties, the weak and the strong. The weak anthropic principle holds that conscious beings (us) exist only in those universes which are finely-tuned for such conscious existence. The strong anthropic principle, on the other hand, “suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints not just on our environment (e.g. the existence of the right stable planetary orbits around a star) but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves.”
One would thus get around the question of fine tuning, which points strongly to intelligent design, by having a vast number of universes, most of them “still-born” (i.e. not supporting life and consciousness) but with a few allowing life to develop, including the cosmos we live in. Hawking and Mlodinow accept the strong anthropic principle but only in the context of the multiverse. We will return to this issue later.
The Grand Design also makes a bold and we believe unjustifiable claim that M-theory puts an end to the quest for a unified field theory, that is, a complete explanation for all physical processes. Reducing all the laws of nature to a single mathematical framework is the holy grail of physics. M-theory resulted from several decades of advances in unifying the weak and strong forces, leaving only gravity to be included. What Hawking and Mlodinow offer is essentially a multi-dimensional extension of string theory, which is also a candidate for unifying particle interactions. It adopts 11 or perhaps as many as 26 dimensions to comprise the multiverse. Objects are confined to that universe but may be able to interact with other universes via gravity, a force which is not restricted to a particular universe.
It is this property of gravity, according to the authors, which necessitates the spontaneous creation of multitude of universes. Gravity has no physical attributes; it is abstract and impalpable. Thus it becomes the transcendent creator, operating out of a void. “M-theory predicts that a great many universe were created out of nothing.” Moreover, since gravity exists beyond all the billions of universes that spring up, creation can’t be tied down to any single formulation: “there seems to be no simple mathematical model or theory that can describe every aspect of the universe. Instead there seems to be the network of theories called M-theory (or what we may term a “theory of theories”). Each theory in the M-theory network is good at describing phenomena within a certain range. Whenever their ranges overlap, the various theories in the network agree, so they can be said to be parts of the same theory.”
The ensembles of universes are generically known as the multiverse (but there are actually different types of multiverses that scientists are exploring). “M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal spaces, perhaps as many as 10 to the power of 500, which means it allows for 10 to the power of 500 different universes, each with its own laws. To get an idea of how many that is think about this. If some being could analyze the laws predicted for each of those universes in just one millisecond and had started working on it at the big bang, at present that being would have studied just 10 to the power of 20 of them.”
This seems like sleight of hand, however. Their theory of everything posits that there is actually no theory of everything. Instead, we have short-range explanations, each plausibly woven into the other. Armed with M-theory, Hawking and Mlodinow can now challenge the concept of creation by design:
“… creation does not require the intervention of a supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise from physical law. They are a prediction of science. Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states at later times, that is, at times like the present, long after their creation. Most of these states will be quite unlike the universe we observe, and quite unsuitable for the existence of any form of life. Only a few would allow creatures like us to exist. Thus our presence selects out from this vast array only those universes only those universes that are compatible with our existence. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense lords of creation.”
For hard-nose scientists of the kind they claim to be, this is metaphysics to the nth degree. We would agree that human beings are lords of creation, in the context of quantum participatory universe. But the statement that “our presence selects…compatible with our existence” is vague and has no formal mathematics, which is inconsistent with the author’s stated goal. They are talking about being, all the time.
Let’s look more closely at the concept of the multiverse. In fact, different classes of multiverses exist. A great taxonomy of universes (forming different types of multiverses) has been provided by Max Tegmark. Each one successively encompasses the previous types: Level I, would be the multiverse containing universes with all possible initial conditions, but still similar to ours, all with the same physical laws and the same physical constants (such as the speed of light). This prediction follows from the theory of chaotic inflation. These universes would be located beyond the horizon of our own universe. Most of them would be different in size but some, similar to ours, would be far, far, far away, more than a googolplex meters away (or 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 100!). Level II, are universes with different physical constants, or “bubble universes.” They occur in the chaotic inflation theory, and they are embryonic level I multiverses. Cosmologists estimate their number to be 10 to the power 10 to the power 10 to the power 7, a number that for all practical purposes is infinite, we cannot even expand it in writing! Different bubbles would experience spontaneous symmetry breaking resulting in myriads of universe with different constants, i.e. different laws of nature.
Level III type of multiverse follows the many worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics first formulated by Hugh Everett and others, among them Wheeler. In quantum mechanics, certain observations cannot be predicted with absolute certainty; there is a range of possible observations, each with a different probability. According to the MWI, each of these possible observations corresponds to a different outcome in a single universe, but each outcome splits and cannot communicate with the others.
As Tegmark remarks, Level I and Level III are somewhat similar, although one resides in regular space-time, while Level III reside in probability space. The MWI comes with so much metaphysical baggage that Wheeler himself abandoned it. The problem, pointed out in the Conscious Universe by one of us, is that MWI assumes the absolute reality of the wave function which is used to describe the state of a quantum mechanics system. We should keep this in mind since MWI, although not the same as the M-theory with its multiverses, is closely related to it. Related to MWI is Richard Feynman’s multiple histories interpretation of quantum mechanics, which Hawking and Mlodinow embrace.
Level IV is the one that Hawking and Mlodinow adopt (although they did not discuss the other types). Having been developed by Tegmark, Level IV considers real all universes that are defined by specific mathematical structures, including universes that have different physical laws from ours. In this most general case, any Theory of Everything must have a mathematical structure. Therefore, mathematics is what counts in the end: multitudes of universes exist because different mathematics exist. We may even assume that this is the case. But then what is the origin of mathematics?
The fallacy here is that Hawking, Mlodinow, and many other theorists assume that mathematics exists outside of the mind that creates theories. A profound metaphysical assumption is being swept under the rug. For example, is the Hilbert space, which allows the formalism of quantum mechanics to work, real in itself? If the answer is yes, then we should, e.g., all follow Plato as this was precisely his view, namely that mathematics resides in a transcendent realm. But then there are only two choices: a) Mathematics and us, the minds who develop mathematics, are in a transcendent realm. If not, then b) Mathematics is an external agent, operating independently of human observers. How is that different from an external God operating outside of human observers?
We prefer the former view, and upon serious consideration, we believe this view may actually be more compatible with science. The Copenhagen school would insist that we should always consider the mathematical formalism as the means to interact with nature, the language we use to communicate with nature. We are part of the whole structure, or more correct the whole process, the mathematics, the physical system or universe, and us.
What we need is a dialogue between science and metaphysics, recognizing both as valid but complementary aspects of one reality. To refute one or try to merge both goes against the efforts of dialogue, the only way out of many problems. By the same token, metaphysics cannot substitute for physics. It cannot work from the premise that there is a creator God, for example, and then force science to conform to it. This is what the proponents of intelligent design attempt to do. The debate will go on, and few people will have their minds changed by this book alone. Perhaps, irrespective of the metaphysical arguments it makes against any need for a Creator, The Grand Design will help the argument to be made more cogent. We will be walking the shadowy line between physics and metaphysics for a long time to come.
(To be cont.)
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