Yes! YES! YES!!!

Yes! YES! YES!!!

The best reason to watch the Episode III dvd again. (And to maybe see some lightsabers).

Speak Like A Child

"11: When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways." - I Corinthians 13:11

This can mean many things. I'll give you one:

Sadly, I'm giving up my (current) Xbox games. Just selling them off. Want them? mostly ea-sports games, but have a couple of star war games, unreal tournament, ninja gaiden and a few others. 39 in all.

Since it takes three times to see something before you remember it.

TUESDAY NIGHT WE HAVE A SHOW.
AN TUA NUA, 8PM
835 BEACON ST, BOSTON, MA
$7

We're performing a new skit that I wrote. Wahoo!

Open casting call: This Saturday, pretty much all day, we're filming a batman movie. we need people willing to stand in as "mobsters" and feign getting beat up by Batman and Robin.

You down? Hollar at brotha...

TUESDAY NIGHT WE HAVE A SHOW.
AN TUA NUA, 8PM
835 BEACON ST, BOSTON, MA
$7

We're performing a new skit that I wrote. Wahoo!

Open casting call: This Saturday, pretty much all day, we're filming a batman movie. we need people willing to stand in as "mobsters" and feign getting beat up by Batman and Robin.

You down? Hollar at brotha...

TUESDAY NIGHT WE HAVE A SHOW.
AN TUA NUA, 8PM
835 BEACON ST, BOSTON, MA
$7

We're performing a new skit that I wrote. Wahoo!

Open casting call: This Saturday, pretty much all day, we're filming a batman movie. we need people willing to stand in as "mobsters" and feign getting beat up by Batman and Robin.

You down? Hollar at brotha...

"I like to ride my bicycle, I like to ride my bike..."

This weekend the gf and I went on inaugural bike ride. I haven't ridden a bike since highschool, and I had some, um, "bruises", to show for it.

But, it was wonderful trip. Of course the gf doesn't think so because I moaned and complained the entire time. But, who doesn't like to complain? Who's with me? Anyone? Fine (grumble, hate you all, grumble).

Tuesday Night we have a show. Let me put that in bold letters of doom.

TUESDAY NIGHT WE HAVE A SHOW.
AN TUA NUA, 8PM
835 BEACON ST, BOSTON, MA

We're performing a new skit that I wrote. Wahoo!

Open casting call.

This Saturday, pretty much all day, we're filming a batman movie. we need people willing to stand in as "mobsters" and feign getting beat up by Batman and Robin.

You down? Hollar at brotha...

The Buffalo-Wing Conspiracy

I know Hillary says there's a "Right-Wing" conspiracy...but what about the Buffalo-Wings that's making us all unhealthy?

Wow

One-Third the Man
Follow Joe's tip: the shortcut only takes you so far
Posted on 02/09/2006
NAME: Joseph Huber

HOME: Milwaukee, WI

AGE: 33

HEIGHT: 6'2"

WEIGHT: 197 lb

OCCUPATION: Machine operator

BEFORE: 547 LB

AFTER: 197 LB

THE GAIN:

Following a nasty divorce 10 years ago, Huber hit the comfort food—hard—and ballooned from his high-school weight of 260 pounds.

A typical Monday Night Football feast consisted of a large pizza, two 2-liter bottles of soda, garlic bread, jalapeño poppers, two beef sandwiches, chips, and beer. “I never felt full,” he says. Huber’s weight steadily increased to 547 pounds.

THE CHANGE:

Climbing a creaky set of porch stairs took Huber a harrowing 15 minutes. “I was afraid the stairs were going to fall off the building,” he says. “I realized then that if I didn’t lose some weight, I would die.” Huber opted for gastric bypass surgery in December 2003, which limited his stomach to 6 ounces of food at a time.

THE LIFESTYLE:

The surgery was just the start. Huber still weighed 450 pounds when he started to ride his bike 7 miles to work. “The first time, it took me an hour and a half,” he says. Huber was soon biking or running to work every day, and he started lifting weights. His stomach has since stretched to fit a normal-size meal, but Huber’s eating habits haven’t regressed: He avoids anything high in fat or sugar, and fuels workouts with protein shakes and tuna sandwiches.

THE REWARD:

Last year, Huber placed 26th out of 472 participants in his first triathlon. His 2006 race schedule is already packed. “I’m at a place I really like,” Huber says. “Eating healthy and exercising are second nature.”

JOE’S TIPS

- The shortcut only takes you so far. “The surgery got me in the right mind-set, but I still had to exercise and eat right to get fit. That’s what really made the difference.”

- Live the diet. “A diet is something you do to lose weight, and then you go back to how you used to eat. Healthy eating has to become your norm.”

- Take baby steps. “I was afraid to push myself in exercise. But if you do it once, it’s not as hard the next time. The more you work at it, the easier things become for you.”

The Belly-Off Club

Wrestling

You type in "wrestling" in YouTube, and your results are mixed.

You either get an interesting promo video from an Independent Federation, the Anarchy Wrestling Federation, like this video here.

Or, you get a weird, fetish-like video of a woman beating the crap out of a man. And I mean beating. She's like smaller than him and still out-wrestles him. Just plain weird. You can find it from looking in the right column of the above link. I can't almost in good conscience give it to you.

And then you get another "hardcore" video of people getting injured while wrasslin'.

It's all real folks; it's just the outcomes that are fixed.

okay, here's that other video.

Peace.

Just A Word On...

...Groundhog Day, ne* Bill Murray.


I think this movie is sappy, but in my mind it's the best example I can think of a great, smart comedian turning to a "sappy" romantic comedy. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Murray is able to make this a heart-warming and funny movie. He brings his uncanny** comedic sense and timing to flesh out the role of Phil Connors, Pittsburgh weathermen. Once again Wikipedia has it right; Murray and the uber-talented Harold Ramis percolate a deeper-than-it-appears discussion of the choices we make about our career, love and life in what is otherwise a sweet and charming box-office pop movie. I know you're sick of seeing it on cable and free-tv, but it really is a good movie.

* I know the correct use of this term, "nee". Here it is:

"ne (masculine) form of née
-- nee (feminine)—born; past participle of naitre, to be born. Often used to give someone or something's former or maiden name: Martha Washington, nee Martha Dandridge. I just think it's funny. Suck it (sic***)."

** Don't get me started!

*** Okay, that's it. It's Hammer-Time!

Way #561 of how I don't want to die.

Way # 561 of how I don't want to die.

Way #561b

Peanut Butter's back!

Well, not really. More like, soy-based peanut-free butter is back. But you know what? After a two year absence, it's good to be back, even if it's on a completely synthetic and not tasting like the real thing basis.

"Aint nothing like the real thing, baby..."

Things that keep me up at night

Instead of going to bed, I've been reading things like this and this. It's nearly 1am. Tomorrow's going to suck...

SHUT UP, I'M A NERD!

Two things that kinda suck

1) Growing up sucks. Those of you who know what I'm talking about, KNOW what I mean. Others who don't? Hollar at your boy.

2) Most of us, to this day, can still rap "Jump" by Kriss Kross. Not that it's bad, it's just an old, dated song!

Thanks A Lot Ny Times!

For giving me even less hope:

March 20, 2006
NY Times Online
Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn
By ERIK ECKHOLM
BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other groups.

Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men.

Especially in the country's inner cities, the studies show, finishing high school is the exception, legal work is scarcer than ever and prison is almost routine, with incarceration rates climbing for blacks even as urban crime rates have declined.

Although the problems afflicting poor black men have been known for decades, the new data paint a more extensive and sobering picture of the challenges they face.

"There's something very different happening with young black men, and it's something we can no longer ignore," said Ronald B. Mincy, professor of social work at Columbia University and editor of "Black Males Left Behind" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).

"Over the last two decades, the economy did great," Mr. Mincy said, "and low-skilled women, helped by public policy, latched onto it. But young black men were falling farther back."

Many of the new studies go beyond the traditional approaches to looking at the plight of black men, especially when it comes to determining the scope of joblessness. For example, official unemployment rates can be misleading because they do not include those not seeking work or incarcerated.

"If you look at the numbers, the 1990's was a bad decade for young black men, even though it had the best labor market in 30 years," said Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and co-author, with Peter Edelman and Paul Offner, of "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).

In response to the worsening situation for young black men, a growing number of programs are placing as much importance on teaching life skills — like parenting, conflict resolution and character building — as they are on teaching job skills.

These were among the recent findings:

¶The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000.

¶Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990's and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20's who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.

¶In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

None of the litany of problems that young black men face was news to a group of men from the airless neighborhoods of Baltimore who recently described their experiences.

One of them, Curtis E. Brannon, told a story so commonplace it hardly bears notice here. He quit school in 10th grade to sell drugs, fathered four children with three mothers, and spent several stretches in jail for drug possession, parole violations and other crimes.

"I was with the street life, but now I feel like I've got to get myself together," Mr. Brannon said recently in the row-house flat he shares with his girlfriend and four children. "You get tired of incarceration."

Mr. Brannon, 28, said he planned to look for work, perhaps as a mover, and he noted optimistically that he had not been locked up in six months.

A group of men, including Mr. Brannon, gathered at the Center for Fathers, Families and Workforce Development, one of several private agencies trying to help men build character along with workplace skills.

The clients readily admit to their own bad choices but say they also fight a pervasive sense of hopelessness.

"It hurts to get that boot in the face all the time," said Steve Diggs, 34. "I've had a lot of charges but only a few convictions," he said of his criminal record.

Mr. Diggs is now trying to strike out on his own, developing a party space for rentals, but he needs help with business skills.

"I don't understand," said William Baker, 47. "If a man wants to change, why won't society give him a chance to prove he's a changed person?" Mr. Baker has a lot of record to overcome, he admits, not least his recent 15-year stay in the state penitentiary for armed robbery.

Mr. Baker led a visitor down the Pennsylvania Avenue strip he wants to escape — past idlers, addicts and hustlers, storefront churches and fortresslike liquor stores — and described a life that seemed inevitable.

He sold marijuana for his parents, he said, left school in the sixth grade and later dealt heroin and cocaine. He was for decades addicted to heroin, he said, easily keeping the habit during three terms in prison. But during his last long stay, he also studied hard to get a G.E.D. and an associate's degree.

Now out for 18 months, Mr. Baker is living in a home for recovering drug addicts. He is working a $10-an-hour warehouse job while he ponders how to make a living from his real passion, drawing and graphic arts.

"I don't want to be a criminal at 50," Mr. Baker said.

According to census data, there are about five million black men ages 20 to 39 in the United States.

Terrible schools, absent parents, racism, the decline in blue collar jobs and a subculture that glorifies swagger over work have all been cited as causes of the deepening ruin of black youths. Scholars — and the young men themselves — agree that all of these issues must be addressed.

Joseph T. Jones, director of the fatherhood and work skills center here, puts the breakdown of families at the core.

"Many of these men grew up fatherless, and they never had good role models," said Mr. Jones, who overcame addiction and prison time. "No one around them knows how to navigate the mainstream society."

All the negative trends are associated with poor schooling, studies have shown, and progress has been slight in recent years. Federal data tend to understate dropout rates among the poor, in part because imprisoned youths are not counted.

Closer studies reveal that in inner cities across the country, more than half of all black men still do not finish high school, said Gary Orfield, an education expert at Harvard and editor of "Dropouts in America" (Harvard Education Press, 2004).

"We're pumping out boys with no honest alternative," Mr. Orfield said in an interview, "and of course their neighborhoods offer many other alternatives."

Dropout rates for Hispanic youths are as bad or worse but are not associated with nearly as much unemployment or crime, the data show.

With the shift from factory jobs, unskilled workers of all races have lost ground, but none more so than blacks. By 2004, 50 percent of black men in their 20's who lacked a college education were jobless, as were 72 percent of high school dropouts, according to data compiled by Bruce Western, a sociologist at Princeton and author of the forthcoming book "Punishment and Inequality in America" (Russell Sage Press). These are more than double the rates for white and Hispanic men.

Mr. Holzer of Georgetown and his co-authors cite two factors that have curbed black employment in particular.

First, the high rate of incarceration and attendant flood of former offenders into neighborhoods have become major impediments. Men with criminal records tend to be shunned by employers, and young blacks with clean records suffer by association, studies have found.

Arrests of black men climbed steeply during the crack epidemic of the 1980's, but since then the political shift toward harsher punishments, more than any trends in crime, has accounted for the continued growth in the prison population, Mr. Western said.

By their mid-30's, 30 percent of black men with no more than a high school education have served time in prison, and 60 percent of dropouts have, Mr. Western said.

Among black dropouts in their late 20's, more are in prison on a given day — 34 percent — than are working — 30 percent — according to an analysis of 2000 census data by Steven Raphael of the University of California, Berkeley.

The second special factor is related to an otherwise successful policy: the stricter enforcement of child support. Improved collection of money from absent fathers has been a pillar of welfare overhaul. But the system can leave young men feeling overwhelmed with debt and deter them from seeking legal work, since a large share of any earnings could be seized.

About half of all black men in their late 20's and early 30's who did not go to college are noncustodial fathers, according to Mr. Holzer. From the fathers' viewpoint, support obligations "amount to a tax on earnings," he said.

Some fathers give up, while others find casual work. "The work is sporadic, not the kind that leads to advancement or provides unemployment insurance," Mr. Holzer said. "It's nothing like having a real job."

The recent studies identified a range of government programs and experiments, especially education and training efforts like the Job Corps, that had shown success and could be scaled up.

Scholars call for intensive new efforts to give children a better start, including support for parents and extra schooling for children.

They call for teaching skills to prisoners and helping them re-enter society more productively, and for less automatic incarceration of minor offenders.

In a society where higher education is vital to economic success, Mr. Mincy of Columbia said, programs to help more men enter and succeed in college may hold promise. But he lamented the dearth of policies and resources to aid single men.

"We spent $50 billion in efforts that produced the turnaround for poor women," Mr. Mincy said. "We are not even beginning to think about the men's problem on similar orders of magnitude."

Back to the Vaca.

It's going well. The GF is getting along well with my peoples. Reconnecting with long-lost relatives. So busy feel like I'm going to need a vacation from the vacation!

How is you?

Peace!

Kanye Whaaaattttt?

Do y'all believe this?

OPV AIDS hypothesis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

According to the oral polio vaccine (OPV) AIDS hypothesis, the AIDS pandemic originated from live polio vaccines prepared in chimpanzee tissue cultures (at least some of which were almost certainly contaminated with chimpanzee SIV) which were administered to up to one million Africans between 1957 and 1960. The specific populations, who may not have been properly informed of the risks before volunteering for the vaccination, were the first in the world to experience HIV-1 infections and AIDS some five to twenty years later.

In particular, the CHAT experimental oral vaccine is claimed to have been contaminated with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a group of viruses endemic to African primates and widely accepted as the origin of HIV. Recent evidence shows that CHAT may have been concentrated in African facilities using tissue cultures made from chimpanzee kidneys (more importantly, utilizing chimpanzee serum, containing macrophages, the target of immunodefficiency viruses).

Proponents of the OPV AIDS hypothesis include journalist Edward Hooper, as well as scientists Louis Pascal and the late W.D. Hamilton.

The alternative, generally accepted natural transfer hypothesis holds that AIDS was accidentally spread to humans through the hunting and eating of the chimpanzee.

Vaccines

Vaccines are weakened, attenuated versions of pathogens intended to provoke an immune response but not to cause disease. Many vaccines are grown in tissue cultures to increase the concentration of the pathogen and modify its properties. In the 1950s, when the OPV was created, there were no rules about which species to use. Chimpanzee kidneys, in particular, were marked as good cultures for growing poliovirus. Vaccines may be "live" or "killed". Live vaccines contain living pathogens and are more potent than killed vaccines. They provoke a stronger, lasting immune response and usually only one dose is required. However, they are unstable and may be contaminated with unwanted pathogens. In the 1950s, it was common practice to locally amplify oral vaccines, because the concentration of the vaccine changed unpredictably during transport. Although killed polio vaccines had been used with much success, no country wanted to be the first to test a live polio vaccine (Pascal, 1990).
[edit]

The CHAT vaccine

CHAT was an oral, live experimental vaccine created at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia by Hilary Koprowski. Between 1957 and 1960 it was given to roughly a million Africans. In Africa, it was administered in the Belgian territories; now the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.

CHAT was an oral vaccine; it was often squirted from a syringe into the back of the patient's throat. Oral transmission is a proven, though inefficient, route for HIV infection. Cases have been confirmed of HIV being spread by oral sex and breast feeding. Mucosal cells and oral lesions, as well as the tonsils, are possible entry points for HIV. The vaccine was given to many young infants with undeveloped immune systems.

In Africa, it was standard to transport a small amount of the original vaccine and then locally amplify it using local facilities and tissue cultures harvested from native animals. In South Africa, African green monkey tissue was used to amplify the Sabin vaccine. In French West Africa and Equatorial Africa, baboons were used to amplify a vaccine from the Pasteur Institute. And in Poland, the CHAT vaccine was amplified using Asian macaques.
[edit]

Recent discoveries
The LMS was sited at Kisangani, formerly Stanleyville
Enlarge
The LMS was sited at Kisangani, formerly Stanleyville

In 2003, Edward Hooper and colleagues travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo and uncovered testimony supporting the OPV hypothesis. In the Congo, the Laboratoire Medical de Stanleyville (LMS) was responsible for testing the CHAT vaccine and perform the initial set of vaccinations. A few miles from LMS was Lindi Camp, a chimpanzee colony at which more than 500 chimps and bonobos, collected from a 300km radius, were sacrificed between 1956 and 1960.

In Kisangani, Hooper talked to former lab technicians that had worked on the vaccination program at LMS. Jacues Kanyama, a virology technician, alleged that batches of CHAT had been prepared locally, a possibility formerly denied by Belgian and American staff who claimed that the lab was too primitive and lacked equipment. According to Kanyama, Paul Osterrieth, in charge of the virology department, had been producing an oral polio vaccine on-site. Philip Elebe, a microbiology technician, claimed that tissue cultures were being produced from Lindi chimpanzees. Osterrieth disputes these claims, saying that no vaccine was prepared locally and that only the CHAT vaccine from America was used. If the accounts are true, they describe a clear mechanism for the introduction of HIV into the human population.
[edit]

History

In 1987 Louis Pascal began to suspect that polio vaccines contaminated with SIVs could be responsible for the AIDS epidemic. By reading medical journals from the 1950s and 1960s and comparing with what was known about the first cases of HIV infection, he concluded that Koprowski's CHAT Type 1 vaccine administered in Belgian Congo between 1957 and 1960 was a likely source. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/Pascal91.html]

In the same year Blaine Elswood, an AIDS treatment activist who had developed similar ideas, contacted the journalist Tom Curtis about a "bombshell story". Curtis investigated the story and published an article in Rolling Stone 1992.[1]. Hilary Koprowski sued the Rolling Stone and Tom Curtis for defamation. The magazine published a retraction: "we never wished to suggest that it has been scientifically proven that Koprowski is the father of AIDS."[2] Rolling Stone also had to pay one million dollars for legal fees and damages.

A few scientists, notably the biologist W.D. Hamilton thought the theory required serious investigation, but they received little support from the scientific community. Hamilton wrote a letter to Science in 1994[3] supporting Pascal and Curtis, but it was rejected by the editors.

Journalist Edward Hooper, who had already begun to investigate the origin of AIDS when the OPV theory was first put forward gradually became convinced of its truth. After nine years of investigations, he detailed the theory and evidence in his 1999 book, The River. In 2004, the Origin of Aids, a TV documentary strongly supportive of the OPV theory, appeared on television stations globally.
[edit]

Criticism

For 15 years, the OPV AIDS theory has been criticized by members of the scientific and medical establishment as being unfounded, unlikely or inconsistent with HIV epidemiology. However, although these criticisms are widely publicized, particularly by mainstream science journals, some people remain convinced of the OPV hypothesis and controversy continues. In October 1992, the journal Science ran a story titled "Panel Nixes Congo Vaccine as AIDS source", on the basis of a panel arranged by the Wistar Institute, an organization at the center of this controversy. In September 2000, 6 samples of the CHAT vaccine from the Wistar Institute were independently tested and no trace of HIV, SIV or chimpanzee DNA was found. This led to widespread announcements of the death of the OPV theory, for example Robin Weiss's article in Nature titled 'Polio vaccines exonerated'. But the samples were not from the same batch as was given out in Kinshasa.

However, in April 2004, claims by the OPV AIDS theory that Kisangani chimpanzees were, indirectly, the true source of HIV-1 was finally put to rest by an article which appeared in Nature entitled "Origin of AIDS: contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted". In the article, researchers Michael Worobey and colleagues verified the existence of SIVcpz in Kisangani chimps. However, through phylogenetic analyses of the virus, they found the SIVcpz that infected these chimps was nested within an entirely different clade of SIVcpz than the strain that includes HIV-1. These results show that the Kisangani chimpanzees could not have been the source of HIV-1. Further, the article proclaims the disproval of a central tenet to the OPV AIDS theory [4]. Hooper disputes this proclamation by asserting the OPV theory never completely relied on the now disproven premise. He explains OPV chimpanzees came from other areas as well[5].

Critics also claim that the OPV hypothesis, if widely known, would undermine public confidence in mass vaccination programs and, in particular, UN plans to eradicate polio. Some, such as Hilary Koprowski, have claimed that anti-vaccine sentiment in Africa has intensified due to the publicization of the hypothesis. However, Hooper argues that conspiratorial rumours about vaccination have been prevalent for most of the century and do not relate to the OPV hypothesis. Hooper also points out that he does not claim that modern polio vaccines are anything but safe[6].
[edit]

SV40

If polio vaccination were responsible for AIDS, it would not be without precedent. SV40, the 40th discovered simian virus, was introduced into the human population in the 1950s by contaminated polio vaccines produced in Asian rhesus monkey kidney cells. It now infects some humans, although it is unclear if it can be passed by human-to-human contact. Research has shown that SV40 induces tumours in hamsters, and has been found present in human brain tumours, mesotheliomas and bone tumours. There is some evidence that SV40 exposure could lead to cancer in humans under natural conditions, but the evidence is far from conclusive.[7][8]

A similar case occurred in 1942, in which 50,000 US servicemen were infected with acute hepatitis B due to contaminated yellow fever vaccine.
[edit]

Zoonoses

A zoonosis is a disease capable of passing between animals and humans. Like other AIDS origin hypotheses, the OPV hypothesis depends on zoonotic transfer to explain the spread of SIV into the human population and its evolution into HIV. Examples of zoonotic transfer include Ebola virus, Marburg virus and SV40 (see above). Arguments against xenotransplantation, the transfer of animal tissue into humans, are supported by the OPV hypothesis, if proven. Such medical experimentation could lead to future epidemics of unknown animal viruses.
[edit]

See also

* Polio
* Vaccine
* Vaccination

[edit]

External links

* Polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS: some key writings
* AIDSOrigins (maintained by Edward Hooper)
* Correspondence regarding LRB article
* SV-40 - Center for Complex Infectious Diseases
* HIV Insite

[edit]

References

* Lecatsas, Gerasmos & Alexander, Jennifer (1989). Safe Testing of Poliovirus Vaccine and the Origin of HIV Infection in Man. South African Medical Journal Vol 76, No. 8,Oct 21, p. 451
* Lecatsas, Gerasmos (1991). Origin of AIDS. Nature Vol 351, No. 6323, May 16, p. 179.
* Pascal, Louis (1991). What Happens When Science Goes Bad: The Corruption of Science and the Origin of AIDS: A Study in Spontaneous Generation Science and Technology Analysis Working Paper #9, University of Wollongong. [9]
* Hooper, Edward (1999). The River : A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS. Boston: Little, Brown, Harmondsworth: The Penguin Press.
* Hooper, Edward (2003). Aids and the Polio Vaccine. London Review of Books Vol 25, No. 7. [10]
* Vilchez RA & Butel JS (2004). Emergent human pathogen simian virus 40 and its role in cancer. Clin Microbiol Rev. Vol 17, No. 3, July, pp 495-508. [11]

Columbus So Far...

The Lady-friend's making a great first impression on the relatives.

And I'm having a good time.

Time for some zzz's.

I hate 3am shuttle-buses to airports. Hate 'em.

'Nuff said.

Why isn't it, "enough?"

San Fran Was Great

Just a quick picture. Maybe I'll explain later.

San Fran, Day 1.5

San Francisco is awesome. I'm so happy to be here. I wanna move here, who's with me?

V For Vendetta, Sunday, March 19th, who's with me?

New underwear with "extra padding", who's with me?

Gotta Go, good night!

Trip To Cali/Ohio

"Leaving...On a Jet Plane...*clap*clap*...Don't know when I'll be back again!"

Well, hopefully March 18th.

The Lady-Raptor and I are going to San Francisco to visit some friends/family, then flying to Ohio to meet up with my family (and introduce her to them). Fun, fun, fun.

Trip's costing us an arm, a leg, a kidney and my meningeal fluid. Which is cool because I don't need meningitis. Although, I do probably need something protecting my spinal chord.

Sorry, had to make a joke here. "BY MENNEN." (Or is it "BUY MENNEN?")

Yeah, so we're going down there. I'll try to bring back some warm weather and a few, non-apocalyptic level 9 earthquakes when I get back. I'll also leave the cows in COW-hio (her phrase, not mine), but if I run into my good buddy Dave Chappelle, I'll tell him you said, "Hi," and "Get back to work."

Peace!

Hermione No!

Sorry Kate. Found a picture online of your hero, Emma Watson, drinking at the tender age of 15 (don't tell Fan -- WHO GETS THAT JOKE?!?)

It's probably just a rootbeer bottle. Still it's a funny little minor-scandle.

Awesome building

I'll say this about Dubai; port deal or not, they're doing some pretty amazing contruction over there. Check these out:


The World
Al Nakheel Properties

Ever wish the world was smaller? This group of more than 250 man-made islands was designed to resemble the entire world when seen from the air. The islands, which range from 250,000 to 900,000 square feet, can be bought by individual developers or private owners -- starting at $6.85 million.

The only way to get between each island is by boat...or yacht, given the clientele. A notable engineering feat: The project incorporates two protective breakwaters to protect the islands from waves, consisting of one submerged reef (the outer breakwater) and an above-water structure (the inner breakwater).


Hydropolis
Joachim Hauser

This hotel, the world's first underwater luxury resort, brings new meaning to the "ocean-view room." Situated 66 feet below the surface of the Persian Gulf, Hydropolis will feature 220 guest suites. Reinforced by concrete and steel, its Plexiglas walls and bubble-shaped dome ceilings offer sights of fish and other sea creatures. It's scheduled to open in late 2007.


Ski Dubai
F + A Architects

When one thinks of a vacation in Dubai, the first images that might to come to mind are sun and sand. Now add snow. Two feet of snow, topped with a daily layer of fresh powder, to be exact -- thanks to the system of 23 blast coolers and snow guns inside Ski Dubai. It might be 135 degrees Fahrenheit outdoors, but inside the 32,290 square-foot, $275 million structure, visitors ski and snowboard. The heavily insulated facility also includes the world's largest indoor snow park, offering 9,842 square feet for sledding or bobsledding.

"Both Sides of Inequality -- David Brooks"

David Brooks has an interesting article on the NY Times' op-ed section. Unfortunately, without NY Times select, you won't be able to read it.

The basic premise is that, if you think about this particular study he cites, working class parents are actually better "Traditional" parents than upper-middle class parents. They do not allow their children to talk back and they allow them to freely come up with their play rather than shuffle them back and forth between appointments. However, ten years later, the study finds that the upper-middle class kids had better educations, better habits (?), and better career job prospects, while the working-class kids where left out. The working class kids said they were often intimidated by adults who were more "verbally dextrous", while the rich kids were comfortable presenting counter-arguments to other adults, and were able to present themselves better.

Brooks then reasons that a tax-credit to the poor will alleviate some of the economic burden, but also that maybe some paradigm shift in parenting should take place as well. And he ends with this, "But the core issue is that today's rich don't exploit the poor; they just outcompete them."

And this is where he lost me.

He had me until the last paragraph. I feel richer kids cheat, not compete, but we now equate the two. That's unfortunate, and eventually it'll bite us. Just look at the effect on corruption in the market. A lot of people seem to think that ignoring Enron, or WorldCom, or even AIG will just go away because corruption is a key component to effecient capitalism. However, corruption leads to empty promises, which leads to empty loans, which when cashed in leads to financial trouble.

Like the big oil crash in the late 70's, early 80's, when countries believed that supply for oil was infinite. Therefore bonds were issued ad infinitum (almost anyways), and when other countries tried to collect on debts that no one could pay, the entire system suffered a severe shock. I still don't think we've fully felt the effects of our current crisis in confidence because many companies have been lying on their balance sheet for a long time now (yes, Bush-conservatives, even before Clinton!). The theory behind it is that there is more money to make in over-promising (and under-delivering); enough so that you could make up the difference between what you have and the lie.

But back to the article. There are other problems that are associated with being poor. Like that part how working class adults are intimidated by people who are verbally dextrous? Well, they're not simply intimidating to poor people, but we have a culture of bullying people. That's different than competing. Or at least, it's not fair competition. It's a culture of getting ahead in a race, and then either a) putting objects in the way where they were none for you; or b) during the next race, making sure your competitors is wearing a 10-pound vest. It's an acceptable part of our culture, but we would be much more efficient as a democracy and as a capitalist nation if we gave up our propensity of violence against those that are more vulnerable than ourselves.

And a tax credit won't decrease their long-term burden. Tax credits almost always benefit the richer more, which place a burden on social services since that taxes from the wealthy pay a majority of the service (I think). Changing the system will hurt the working class more because they have to use more of their tax credits to pay for services; Leaving them in the same place they were at to begin with.

And by services I don't mean just healthcare or social security, but I mean everything the government does, from administrating laws to fixing our roads (and hopefully levees--POOR JOKE!).

Just think about it, if you have money in this country it's because of two reasons: you either inherited it, or you worked for it. However, at no time did you ever not benefited from our tax-system. If you inherited your money, there was a point where you benefitted from a system where poorer people were a cheap source of labor, and you easily able to afford whatever you needed. And if you couldn't, then you could take it from the poor. (Have you seen some of the shady life insurances they used to sell? Some guy would point to someone and say, "that person is a key component to my revenue stream. If he dies, I'll lose this much money." And then they would collect TONS of money off someone they had no real connection to. back to my story.) Furthermore, it was the poor who administer the services you most need, like garbage collection, tending the garden, looking after your children, fixing your car, delivering your mail...etc.

And if you weren't from money, but came into money, then you benefitted from other people paying taxes which paid for your services. But then you have all these noveau riche (Lexington, I'm looking at YOU!), who want to climb the ladder, and then kick it off so that no one else can climb up with them. It's destroying the system that made you to create a darker, more sinister system of fiefdoms and inequity.

Oops. I'm preaching again. I'll stop now and get back to work. Here's the article. Enjoy!

March 9, 2006
Ny Times Op-Ed Columnist
Both Sides of Inequality
By DAVID BROOKS

For the past two decades, Annette Lareau has embedded herself in American families. She and her researchers have sat on living room floors as families went about their business, ridden in back seats as families drove hither and yon.

Lareau's work is well known among sociologists, but neglected by the popular media. And that's a shame because through her close observations and careful writings — in books like "Unequal Childhoods" — Lareau has been able to capture the texture of inequality in America. She's described how radically child-rearing techniques in upper-middle-class homes differ from those in working-class and poor homes, and what this means for the prospects of the kids inside.

The thing you learn from her work is that it's wrong to say good parents raise successful kids and bad parents raise unsuccessful ones. The story is more complicated than that.

Looking at upper-middle-class homes, Lareau describes a parenting style that many of us ridicule but do not renounce. This involves enrolling kids in large numbers of adult-supervised activities and driving them from place to place. Parents are deeply involved in all aspects of their children's lives. They make concerted efforts to provide learning experiences.

Home life involves a lot of talk and verbal jousting. Parents tend to reason with their children, not give them orders. They present "choices" and then subtly influence the decisions their kids make. Kids feel free to pass judgment on adults, express themselves and even tell their siblings they hate them when they're angry.

The pace is exhausting. Fights about homework can be titanic. But children raised in this way know how to navigate the world of organized institutions. They know how to talk casually with adults, how to use words to shape how people view them, how to perform before audiences and look people in the eye to make a good first impression.

Working-class child-rearing is different, Lareau writes. In these homes, there tends to be a much starker boundary between the adult world and the children's world. Parents think that the cares of adulthood will come soon enough and that children should be left alone to organize their own playtime. When a girl asks her mother to help her build a dollhouse out of boxes, the mother says no, "casually and without guilt," because playtime is deemed to be inconsequential — a child's sphere, not an adult's.

Lareau says working-class children seem more relaxed and vibrant, and have more intimate contact with their extended families. "Whining, which was pervasive in middle-class homes, was rare in working-class and poor ones," she writes.

But these children were not as well prepared for the world of organizations and adulthood. There was much less talk in the working-class homes. Parents were more likely to issue brusque orders, not give explanations. Children, like their parents, were easily intimidated by and pushed around by verbally dexterous teachers and doctors. Middle-class kids felt entitled to individual treatment when entering the wider world, but working-class kids felt constrained and tongue-tied.

The children Lareau describes in her book were playful 10-year-olds. Now they're in their early 20's, and their destinies are as you'd have predicted. The perhaps overprogrammed middle-class kids got into good colleges and are heading for careers as doctors and other professionals. The working-class kids are not doing well. The little girl who built dollhouses had a severe drug problem from ages 12 to 17. She had a child outside wedlock, a baby she gave away because she was afraid she would hurt the child. She now cleans houses with her mother.

Lareau told me that when she was doing the book, the working-class kids seemed younger; they got more excited by things like going out for pizza. Now the working-class kids seem older; they've seen and suffered more.

But the point is that the working-class parents were not bad parents. In a perhaps more old-fashioned manner, they were attentive. They taught right from wrong. In some ways they raised their kids in a healthier atmosphere. (When presented with the schedules of the more affluent families, they thought such a life would just make kids sad.)

But they did not prepare their kids for a world in which verbal skills and the ability to thrive in organizations are so important. To help the worse-off parents, we should raise the earned-income tax credit to lessen their economic stress. But the core issue is that today's rich don't exploit the poor; they just outcompete them.

Influential American FIlmaker and Photographer Gordon Parks Passes Away at 95

Man, Gordon Parks is one of the most influential black and American filmmakers to ever live. Not only is he the first black to produce and direct a Hollywood studio-movie, but he's also the longest tenured photographer for Life Magazine (1949-1972). At least he was. Largely self taught, he is an inspiration for storytellers of any color who believe they can do anything as long as they set their mind to it. His obituary can be read at the New York Times. I want to share with you some of his more famous photographs. But this website will have to do for now, until blogger.com lets me upload photos on to this webpage.

While I'm at it, why don't I just share with you the NY Times article, to save you time?

NY Times
March 8, 2006
Gordon Parks, a Master of the Camera, Dies at 93
By ANDY GRUNDBERG

Gordon Parks, the photographer, filmmaker, writer and composer who used his prodigious, largely self-taught talents to chronicle the African-American experience and to retell his own personal history, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.

His death was announced by Genevieve Young, his former wife and executor. Gordon Parks was the first African-American to work as a staff photographer for Life magazine and the first black artist to produce and direct a major Hollywood film, "The Learning Tree," in 1969.

He developed a large following as a photographer for Life for more than 20 years, and by the time he was 50 he ranked among the most influential image makers of the postwar years. In the 1960's he began to write memoirs, novels, poems and screenplays, which led him to directing films. In addition to "The Learning Tree," he directed the popular action films "Shaft" and "Shaft's Big Score!" In 1970 he helped found Essence magazine and was its editorial director from 1970 to 1973.

An iconoclast, Mr. Parks fashioned a career that resisted categorization. No matter what medium he chose for his self-expression, he sought to challenge stereotypes while still communicating to a large audience. In finding early acclaim as a photographer despite a lack of professional training, he became convinced that he could accomplish whatever he set his mind to. To an astonishing extent, he proved himself right.

Gordon Parks developed his ability to overcome barriers in childhood, facing poverty, prejudice and the death of his mother when he was a teen-ager. Living by his wits during what would have been his high-school years, he came close to being claimed by urban poverty and crime. But his nascent talent, both musical and visual, was his exit visa.

His success as a photographer was largely due to his persistence and persuasiveness in pursuing his subjects, whether they were film stars and socialites or an impoverished slum child in Brazil.

Mr. Parks's years as a contributor to Life, the largest-circulation picture magazine of its day, lasted from 1948 to 1972, and it cemented his reputation as a humanitarian photojournalist and as an artist with an eye for elegance. He specialized in subjects relating to racism, poverty and black urban life, but he also took exemplary pictures of Paris fashions, celebrities and politicians.

"I still don't know exactly who I am," Mr. Parks wrote in his 1979 memoir, "To Smile in Autumn." He added, "I've disappeared into myself so many different ways that I don't know who 'me' is."

Much of his literary energy was channeled into memoirs, in which he mined incidents from his adolescence and early career in an effort to find deeper meaning in them. His talent for telling vivid stories was used to good effect in "The Learning Tree," which he wrote first as a novel and later converted into a screenplay. This was a coming-of-age story about a young black man whose childhood plainly resembled the author's. It was well received when it was published in 1963 and again in 1969, when Warner Brothers released the film version. Mr. Parks wrote, produced and directed the film and wrote the music for its soundtrack. He was also the cinematographer.

"Gordon Parks was like the Jackie Robinson of film," Donald Faulkner, the director of the New York State Writers Institute, once said. "He broke ground for a lot of people — Spike Lee, John Singleton."

Mr. Parks's subsequent films, "Shaft" (1971) and "Shaft's Big Score!" (1972), were prototypes for what became known as blaxploitation films. Among Mr. Park's other accomplishments were a second novel, four books of memoirs, four volumes of poetry, a ballet and several orchestral scores. As a photographer Mr. Parks combined a devotion to documentary realism with a knack for making his own feelings self-evident. The style he favored was derived from the Depression-era photography project of the Farm Security Administration, which he joined in 1942 at the age of 30.

Perhaps his best-known photograph, which he titled "American Gothic," was taken during his brief time with the agency; it shows a black cleaning woman named Ella Watson standing stiffly in front of an American flag, a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. Mr. Parks wanted the picture to speak to the existence of racial bigotry and inequality in the nation's capital. He was in an angry mood when he asked the woman to pose, having earlier been refused service at a clothing store, a movie theater and a restaurant.

Anger at social inequity was at the root of many of Mr. Parks's best photographic stories, including his most famous Life article, which focused on a desperately sick boy living in a miserable Rio de Janeiro slum. Mr. Parks described the plight of the boy, Flavio da Silva, in realistic detail. In one photograph Flavio lies in bed, looking close to death. In another he sits behind his baby brother, stuffing food into the baby's mouth while the baby reaches his wet, dirty hands into the dish for more food.

Mr. Parks's pictures of Flavio's life created a groundswell of public response when they were published in 1961. Life's readers sent some $30,000 in contributions, and the magazine arranged to have the boy flown to Denver for medical treatment for asthma and paid for a new home in Rio for his family.

Mr. Parks credited his first awareness of the power of the photographic image to the pictures taken by his predecessors at the Farm Security Administration, including Jack Delano, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein and Ben Shahn. He first saw their photographs of migrant workers in a magazine he picked up while working as a waiter in a railroad car. "I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs," he told an interviewer in 1999. "I knew at that point I had to have a camera."

Many of Mr. Parks's early photo essays for Life, like his 1948 story of a Harlem youth gang called the Midtowners, were a revelation for many of the magazine's predominantly white readers and a confirmation for Mr. Parks of the camera's power to shape public discussion.

But Mr. Parks made his mark mainly with memorable single images within his essays, like "American Gothic," which were iconic in the manner of posters. His portraits of Malcolm X (1963), Muhammad Ali (1970) and the exiled Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver (1970) evoked the styles and strengths of black leadership in the turbulent transition from civil rights to black militancy.

But at Life Mr. Parks also used his camera for less politicized, more conventional ends, photographing the socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, who became his friend; a fashionable Parisian in a veiled hat puffing hard on her cigarette, and Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini at the beginning of their notorious love affair.

On his own time he photographed female nudes in a style akin to that of Baroque painting, experimented with double-exposing color film and recorded pastoral scenes that evoke the pictorial style of early-20-century art photography.

Much as his best pictures aspired to be metaphors, Mr. Parks shaped his own life story as a cautionary tale about overcoming racism, poverty and a lack of formal education. It was a project he pursued in his memoirs and in his novel; all freely mix documentary realism with a fictional sensibility.

The first version of his autobiography was "A Choice of Weapons" (1966), which was followed by "To Smile in Autumn" (1979) and "Voices in the Mirror: An Autobiography" (1990). The most recent account of his life appeared in 1997 in "Half Past Autumn" (Little, Brown), a companion to a traveling exhibition of his photographs.

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was born on Nov. 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kan. He was the youngest of 15 children born to a tenant farmer, Andrew Jackson Parks, and the former Sarah Ross. Although mired in poverty and threatened by segregation and the violence it engendered, the family was bound by Sarah Parks's strong conviction that dignity and hard work could overcome bigotry.

Young Gordon's security ended when his mother died. He was sent to St. Paul, Minn., to live with the family of an older sister. But the arrangement lasted only a few weeks; during a quarrel, Mr. Parks's brother-in-law threw him out of the house. Mr. Parks learned to survive on the streets, using his untutored musical gifts to find work as a piano player in a brothel and later as the singer for a big band. He attended high school in St. Paul but never graduated.

In 1933 he married a longtime sweetheart, Sally Alvis, and they soon had a child, Gordon Jr. While his family stayed near his wife's relatives in Minneapolis, Mr. Parks traveled widely to find work during the Depression.

He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, toured as a semi-pro basketball player and worked as a busboy and waiter. It was while he was a waiter on the North Coast Limited, a train that ran between Chicago and Seattle, that he picked up a magazine discarded by a passenger and saw for the first time the documentary pictures of Lange, Rothstein and the other photographers of the Farm Security Administration.

In 1938 Mr. Parks purchased his first camera at a Seattle pawn shop. Within months he had his pictures exhibited in the store windows of the Eastman Kodak store in Minneapolis, and he began to specialize in portraits of African-American women.

He also talked his way into making fashion photographs for an exclusive St. Paul clothing store. Marva Louis, the elegant wife of the heavyweight champion Joe Louis, chanced to see his photographs and was so impressed that she suggested that he move to Chicago for better opportunities to do more of them.

In Chicago Mr. Parks continued to produce society portraits and fashion images, but he also turned to documenting the slums of the South Side. His efforts gained him a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, which he spent as an apprentice with the Farm Security Administration's photography project in Washington under its director, Roy Stryker.

In 1943, with World War II under way, the farm agency was disbanded and Stryker's project was transferred to the Office of War Information (O.W.I.). Mr. Parks became a correspondent for the O.W.I. photographing the 332d Fighter Group, an all-black unit based near Detroit. Unable to accompany the pilots overseas, he relocated to Harlem to search for freelance assignments.

In 1944 Alexander Liberman, then art director of Vogue, asked him to photograph women's fashions, and Mr. Parks's pictures appeared regularly in the magazine for five years. Mr. Parks's simultaneous pursuit of the worlds of beauty and of tough urban textures made him a natural for Life magazine. After talking himself into an audience with Wilson Hicks, Life's fabled photo editor, he emerged with two plum assignments: one to create a photo essay on gang wars in Harlem, the other to photograph the latest Paris collections.

Life often assigned Mr. Parks to subjects that would have been difficult or impossible for a white photojournalist to carry out, such as the Black Muslim movement and the Black Panther Party. But Mr. Parks also enjoyed making definitive portraits of Barbra Streisand, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Alberto Giacometti and Alexander Calder. From 1949 to 1951 he was assigned to the magazine's bureau in Paris, where he photographed everything from Marshal Pétain's funeral to scenes of everyday life. While in Paris he socialized with the expatriate author Richard Wright and wrote his first piano concerto, using a musical notation system of his own devising.

As the sole black photographer on Life's masthead in the 1960's, Mr. Parks was frequently characterized by black militants as a man willing to work for the oppressor. In the mid-1960's he declined to endorse a protest against the magazine by a number of black photographers, including Roy DeCarava, who said they felt that the editorial assignment staff discriminated against them. Mr. DeCarava never forgave him.

At the same time, according to Mr. Parks's memoirs, Life's editors came to question his ability to be objective. "I was black," he noted in "Half Past Autumn," "and my sentiments lay in the heart of black fury sweeping the country."

In 1962, at the suggestion of Carl Mydans, a fellow Life photographer, Mr. Parks began to write a story based on his memories of his childhood in Kansas. The story became the novel "The Learning Tree," and its success opened new horizons, leading him to write his first memoir, "A Choice of Weapons"; to combine his photographs and poems in a book called "A Poet and His Camera" (1968) and, most significantly, to become a film director, with the movie version of "The Learning Tree" in 1969.

Mr. Parks's second film, "Shaft," released in 1971, was a hit of a different order. Ushering in an onslaught of genre movies in which black protagonists played leading roles in violent, urban crime dramas, "Shaft" was both a commercial blockbuster and a racial breakthrough. Its hero, John Shaft, played by Richard Roundtree, was a wily private eye whose success came from operating in the interstices of organized crime and the law. Isaac Hayes won an Oscar for the theme music, and the title song became a pop hit.

After the successful "Shaft" sequel in 1972 and a comedy called "The Super Cops" (1974), Mr. Parks's Hollywood career sputtered to a halt with the film "Leadbelly" (1976). Intended as an homage to the folk singer Huddie Ledbetter, who died in 1949, the movie was both a critical and a box-office failure. Afterward Mr. Parks made films only for television.

After departing Life in 1972, the year the magazine shut down as a weekly, Mr. Parks continued to write and compose. His second novel, "Shannon" (1981), about Irish immigrants at the beginning of the century, is the least autobiographical of his writing. He wrote the music and the libretto for the 1989 ballet "Martin," a tribute to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., choreographed by Rael Lamb.

He also continued to photograph. But much of Mr. Parks's artistic energy in the 1980's and 1990's was spent summing up his productive years with the camera. In 1987, the first major retrospective exhibition of his photographs was organized by the New York Public Library and the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University.

The more recent retrospective, "Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks," was organized in 1997 by the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington. It later traveled to New York and to other cities. Many honors came Mr. Parks's way, including a National Medal of Arts award from President Ronald Reagan in 1988. The man who never finished high school was a recipient of 40 honorary doctorates from colleges and universities in the United States and England.

His marriages to Sally Alvis, Elizabeth Campbell and Genevieve Young ended in divorce. A son from his first marriage, Gordon Parks Jr., died in 1979 in a plane crash while making a movie in Kenya. He is survived by his daughter Toni Parks Parson and his son David, also from his first marriage, and a daughter, Leslie Parks Harding, from his second marriage; five grandchildren; and five great grandchildren.

"I'm in a sense sort of a rare bird," Mr. Parks said in an interview in The New York Times in 1997. "I suppose a lot of it depended on my determination not to let discrimination stop me." He never forgot that one of his teachers told her students not to waste their parents' money on college because they would end up as porters or maids anyway. He dedicated one honorary degree to her because he had been so eager to prove her wrong.

"I had a great sense of curiosity and a great sense of just wanting to achieve," he said. "I just forgot I was black and walked in and asked for a job and tried to be prepared for what I was asking for."

KP, RIP

.318 average, 2,304 hits, six Gold Gloves, 12 seasons, 10 straight All-Star Game appearances, two championship rings, 1st time hall of famer.

i know he had his demons with women, his fight with gloucoma and weight issues, but he passed much too soon. too soon for him to finish working out all those problems.

he just made an overweight kid believe that with determination to go out and make contact and play hard and you could be a world series hero and a team leader.

Mohegan Sun

So.

Just a response to a comment left on the ol' blog. It was snowing down in Connecticut, but not in Massachusetts. As soon as I hit CT, it was snowing. I knew this because I called my sister to check on the weather. I thought it would be light, but nope, as soon as I was about 45 min from the place, there was snow on the ground. And pretty soon, the whole place was covered in snow. So, it turned a 1 hour 30 minute commute to 3 hours. Not too bad, expect for the fact that I'm a little skittish about driving in the snow. I had an accident a while ago, where it stopped snowing and the roads where clear, but I hit a patch of black ice, hit the curb, and wrecked the alignment on the family volvo. Didn't hit anybody, and didn't leave a noticeable scratch on the car, but it was still ruined. Also, had a small, old 1984-5 BMW standard that just was hell on wheels whenever it snowed, so I never really got used to driving in it. I'm a wuss, what can I say?

so, I'm driving down, I see a few people wipe, yes wipe, out on the snow, just completely spin out of control and hit the medium, which made me very nervous. But I still made it safe and sound...After losing a few pounds due to sweat.

the hotel rooms were pretty awesome. Maybe it was because the bed was nice, or maybe it was because it was really the only truly smoke-free place. Or maybe it was because I won some guy's woman playing craps and another guy's bottle of Champaign playing pazaak. nah, it was definitely the bed.

just a side thought. Apparently, hulk hogan has 4 houses, one of which is so big he keeps a full-time staff of 4 people fully employed to run it. damn, I need to get into wrestling! who wants to be my tag-team partner?

so, we had a some of those "rah-rah, go team" meetings, then got to gamble. I know nothing about gambling, but someone showed me the rules and the odds of playing the roulette wheel. After breaking even (which means I lost $1) and thinking I had the "system" down, I decided to bet everything on black (ala wesley snipes), but then said, "I'll probably lose anyways." which jinxed everything for me and the whole table. After realizing the actual "system" is to see which numbers have been coming up and then betting the number, before the number, and after the number, I slinked away minus $10.

then figuring that I "know" video games, we (the lady-bug and I) hit a few of the video slots machines. After just playing around, we (I) finally had a hit of $90! Meaning we walked away up $50 from the casino. I wanted to play some more, just another $10, but my hand(z) were forced.

that's the mohegan sun story.

I had something longer I wanted to post. About goals, dreams and about politics, but then my computer lost it during a "blue screen of death" and I had to reboot the computer, losing my work. argh.

until next time...

Mohegan Sun

So.

Just a response to a comment left on the ol' blog. It was snowing down in Conneticut, but not in Massachusetts. As soon as I hit CT, it was snowing. I knew this because I called my sister to check on the weather. I thought it would be light, but nope, as soon as I was about 45 min from the place, there was snow on the ground. And pretty soon, the whole place was covered in snow. So, it turned a 1 hour 30 minute commute to 3 hours. Not too bad, expect for the fact that I'm a little skittish about driving in the snow. I had an accident a while ago, where it stopped snowing and the roads where clear, but I hit a patch of black ice, hit the curb, and wrecked the alignment on the family volvo. didn't hit anybody, and didn't leave a noticeable scratch on the car, but it was still ruined. also, had a small, old 1984-5 bmw standard that just was hell on wheels whenever it snowed, so i never really got used to driving in it. i'm a wuss, what can i say?

so, i'm driving down, i see a few people whipe, yes whipe, out on the snow, just competely spin out of control and hit the medium, which made me very nervous. but i still made it safe and sound...after losing a few pounds due to sweat.

the hotel rooms were pretty awesome. maybe it was because the bed was nice, or maybe it was because it was really the only truly smoke-free place. or maybe it was because I won some guy's woman playing craps and another guy's bottle of champaign playing pazaak. nah, it was definitely the bed.

just a side thought. apparently, hulk hogan has 4 houses, one of which is so big he keeps a full-time staff of 4 people fully employed to run it. damn, i need to get into wrestling! who wants to be my tag-team partner?

so, we had a some of those "rah-rah, go team" meetings, then got to gamble. i know nothing about gambling, but someone showed me the rules and the odds of playing the roulette wheel. after breaking even (which means i lost $1) and thinking i had the "system" down, i decided to bet everything on black (ala wesley snipes), but then said, "i'll probably lose anyways." which jinxed everything for me and the whole table. after realizing the actual "system" is to see which numbers have been coming up and then betting the number, before the number, and after the number, i slinked away minus $10.

then figuring that i "know" video games, we (the lady-bug and i) hit a few of the video slots machines. after just playing around, we (I) finally had a hit of $90! meaning we walked away up $50 from the casino. i wanted to play some more, just another $10, but my hand(z) were forced.

that's the mohegan sun story.

i had something longer i wanted to post. about goals, dreams and about politics, but then my computer lost it during a "blue screen of death" and i had to reboot the computer, losing my work. argh.

until next time...

Monster Voice Mail Message

Call me at 781-280-5206 and listen to my monster voice mail message as I almost lose my "bref".

Just kidding you don't have to call and listen.

Mogehan Snow, I mean Sun, here I come!

Weather Sucks

So, I'm supposed to drive down for Moghegan Sun today for a corporate event. The problem? It's snowing right now and supposed to get up to 10 inches. If you remember me, snow and I haven't gotten along. I got into a can accident with a curb that ruined the family volvo when I was in highschool. Or just out of it. Whatever. And then, I slipped and fell last year. I'm hoping I have a few more years before my mishap with snow, and for now I can use my hard-earned wisdom for better.

But seriously, isn't it a little unfair that we have snow, when Witchita Falls, TX and a few places in New Mexico has 95-degree weather (according to the Weather Channel)? Yes, it is unfair.

What is Lawrence Phillips' problem?

I mean, he has like everything you'd want. He was a highly-touted RB prospect. Teams were willing (and some did) to throw millions of dollars at him, and yet he still can't keep himself in check. I mean, he was cut from a team for missing practice. He pushed women down stairs or hit them. Now, he's charged with driving a car through a crowd of TEENAGERS who were arguing with him. Now listen, I'm the last guy who doesn't mind a little tough love being practiced on some hard-nose, cooler-than-you, jaded-because-that's-how-i'm-supposed-to-be young punks, but running them over with a car? Dude, CHILL THE FCUK OUT! I mean, it was a pick up game dude! DUDE!

What's the DEAL with Lawrence Phillips?

Funny, if you check out that "Teenagers" link above, and look at that picture, you see one guy in the background who's clearly an old-man slumming it in highschool to be cool.