The Sexual Misery of the Arab World – The New York Times

A friend recently told me about a former Special Forces soldier who served in Iraq and frequently encountered captured militia leaders. According to him, the laptops of these warlords would inevitably be cram-full of gay pornography. I’ve long heard that the Middle East are some of the biggest consumers of pornography. Google now confirms it.

I’ve heard it said before that the Arab world’s sexual repression is the main fuel of its radicalism. The author points out that the West’s radicalism has the same roots. Seems to me that any religion that damns one for being oneself is not a healthy religion. It’s hard to serve such contradictory masters.

The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed; at a minimum, they are blamed for sowing disorder in the ideal society. In response, some European countries have taken to producing guides of good conduct to refugees and migrants.

Source: The Sexual Misery of the Arab World – The New York Times

Half my life in Raleigh

Downtown_Raleigh_at_night_Jan_2012-NCDOT-1800x1072
According to a geeky tool known as www.timeanddate.com, Friday was the date when I officially spent half of my life in Raleigh. I arrived on Sunday, 2 August 1992 to attend N.C. State and somehow never left. Prior to Raleigh, the longest I’d ever lived somewhere was 7 years in Columbia, SC, where I finished elementary school and started middle school.

August 2nd wasn’t my first look at Raleigh that year. I originally drove up from Columbia for the Jimmy Buffett concerts on 12-13 June 1992, staying at the Barton Place condo being rented by my high school buddy, Mike. My very first look at Raleigh was driving up for the State-Carolina game on 17 Oct 1987. I crashed at my friend Chris’s dorm room in Bragaw Hall. He gave me a tour of Raleigh’s then-desolate downtown.

Back then I never thought Raleigh would ever hold my interest. Fortunately, it has grown to suit me. I don’t know if my kids will decide to stay here, though. My daughter seems set on new horizons but one can never say never. For me, though, Raleigh’s been a wonderful place to live, work, and play and it gets a little better every day.

New Scandal for US: Republicans Asked Tehran to Keep US Prisoners (including Navy and Marines) in Jail Until Presidential Elections | Veterans Today

If this is true, and so far there is no independent confirmation, it would not be the first time that Republicans have tried to convince Iranians to continue holding our hostages for partisan reasons.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s top security official Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani disclosed on Thursday that the US Republicans had demanded Tehran to suspend the January prisoners’ swap deal with Washington until the presidential elections in the US.

“The US Republicans sent a message to Tehran, demanding us not to release the American spies until the presidential race starts in the US,” Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said on Thursday.

“However, we did release the US prisoners in an independent decision,” he continued.

Source: New Scandal for US: Republicans Asked Tehran to Keep US Prisoners (including Navy and Marines) in Jail Until Presidential Elections | Veterans Today

Why Not Being Friends With Henry Kissinger Matters

In the midst of questioning the United States’ history of overthrowing and meddling in other countries’ governments, Bernie Sanders denounced Hillary Clinton for befriending and taking advice from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Numerous media commentators reacted by mocking the Sanders campaign, believing millennials could not possibly know anything about Kissinger. They suggested millennials did not care about what Kissinger did either.

It was typical of an establishment media class, which eschews serious reflection on the record of any current or former official’s role in war crimes or atrocities. But Kissinger is someone who Clinton has mentioned multiple times during debates and at campaign events. She said during the last debate in New Hampshire, “I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time.”

Source: Why Not Being Friends With Henry Kissinger Matters

Can we make sense of the Malheur mess? — High Country News

I am isolated by a culture that is as inscrutable to me as any in the mountains of Afghanistan. For loving wilderness and empty lands and birdsong rather than teeming cities, I risk being called a xenophobe, a noxious nativist. For viewing guns as constitutionally protected, essential tools of self-defense and, if need be, liberation, I’m told that I defend the massacres of innocents in mass shootings. When I came to Montana at age twenty-five, I found in this vast landscape, especially in the public lands where I hunted and camped and worked, the freedom that was evaporating in the South, where I grew up. I got happily lost in the space and the history. For a nature-obsessed, gun-soaked malcontent like me, it was home, and when Ammon Bundy and his men took over the Malheur refuge, on a cold night in January, I thought I should go visit my neighbors.

Source: Can we make sense of the Malheur mess? — High Country News

Gravitational Waves Exist: The Inside Story of How Scientists Finally Found Them – The New Yorker

Astronomers have discovered gravitational waves, and in the process opened up a brand new realm of astronomy. It’s an amazing time to be alive.

The LIGO scientists have extracted an astonishing amount from the signal, including the masses of the black holes that produced it, their orbital speed, and the precise moment at which their surfaces touched. They are substantially heavier than expected, a surprise that, if confirmed by future observations, may help to explain how the mysterious supermassive black holes at the heart of many galaxies are formed. The team has also been able to quantify what is known as the ringdown—the three bursts of energy that the new, larger black hole gave off as it became spherical. “Seeing the ringdown is spectacular,” Levin said. It offers confirmation of one of relativity theory’s most important predictions about black holes—namely, that they radiate away imperfections in the form of gravitational waves after they coalesce.

Source: Gravitational Waves Exist: The Inside Story of How Scientists Finally Found Them – The New Yorker

The Bishop’s Boys

The_Bishops_Boys
Just finished the excellent biography by Tom D. Crouch of the Wright Brothers called The Bishop’s Boys. A few things I came away with after reading this book:

  • The Wrights may not have been the first to take to the air, but they were indeed the first to do so in a controlled, purposeful manner. That’s the difference between a glider and an airplane.
  • They stood on the shoulders of giants. The Wrights gathered up all the research they could find on the efforts to build an airplane and added their own to it. Granted it was pretty important stuff, stability and all, but they didn’t start exactly from the ground-up as I always imagined they did.
  • Though they shared many of the same unique qualities that aided their invention, the airplane started as Wilbur’s project and Orville joined in later. Wilbur primarily worked out the engineering problems and Orville’s mechanical skills transformed them into a working machine. They worked jointly on both but these were the strengths of each.
  • The brothers considered themselves to be failures, lacking ambition in life, before they were inspired to build the airplane.
  • Science said an airplane couldn’t be built. Engineering proved it could. According to the book, science couldn’t even explain how an airplane worked until a quarter-century after the first one took to the skies.
  • The Wrights were top-notch engineers. Smart, knowledgeable, intensely curious, and exceedingly careful. They really wanted to know everything that went into making an airplane fly. They didn’t take anyone’s word for anything. This is partially why they succeeded without killing themselves in the process, unlike so many of their contemporaries.
  • Once their airplane flew the Wrights became essentially arms dealers, selling it to the highest bidders among various governments. There isn’t much discussion about the moral repercussions of having their invention become a weapon of war. The Wrights seemed never to have a second thought about this, nor was there any apparent push to have it used primarily for peaceful purposes. The Wrights were too eager to cash in, in my view.
  • Orville Wright nearly died from typhoid fever in 1896, seven years before the first flight.
    • The Wright Brothers take to the air for the first time, Dec 17, 1903.

    The Wright Brothers take to the air for the first time, Dec 17, 1903.

  • Both brothers were high school dropouts.
  • Both were thoroughly unfazed by the rich and powerful. They were called on by kings and presidents and treated them the same as anyone else.
  • The Wrights never would’ve gotten off the ground if it were not for the selfless assistance of their unsung sister, Katherine. I suppose “The Wright Brothers and Sister” didn’t have the same ring to it.
  • For several years after their first flight, the world considered them frauds and liars. It was only several years later that the Wrights’ airplane was publicly demonstrated.

    • As Orville mused later in his life, he and Wilbur might never have created the airplane if so many circumstances hadn’t lined up precisely the way they did. The book is an entertaining account of how fate did line up.

    Fearing the radio

    Console radio

    Console radio

    News and Observer reporter John Murawski wrote today of a group of electricity customers who fear that the smart meter Duke Energy uses is poisoning them with radio-frequency (RF) radiation.

    Andrew McAfee of Raleigh submitted a 45-page filing, noting prominently: “Sent from a cabled computer with the WiFi turned off.”

    “Your body basically becomes an antenna,” he said from his landline phone last week. “I immediately feel a tingling, burning sensation on my scalp.”

    “These meters are designed to burst a radiation signal out a couple of miles,” McAfee said of smart meters. “Imagine every house in your neighborhood blipping out these things all day.”

    Apparently, people don’t understand that radiation of the RF variety is not the same as radiation of the nuclear variety. One is a known carcinogen. The other brings you Fox News (whether Fox News is a carcinogen is post for another day).

    Blaming RF (which I’ll call by their better-known name, radio) for something is akin to blaming sound: it all depends on what the sound or radio is. Listening to music with your ear placed on the grill of a 1000 watt audio amplifier will likely cause you injury, whereas the same music at a reasonable volume on your stereo at home can be safe and enjoyable.
    Continue reading →

    Feeling the Yern: Why the Kids Are All Right About Bernie Sanders | Village Voice

    Great perspective of a young feminist who supports Bernie Sanders.

    There seems to be no shortage of bizarrely sexist assumptions as to why I, a Millennial feminist, am not voting for Hillary Clinton. But speaking as a Millennial feminist, let me assure you: None of them is accurate. Granted, the span of my political biography is only as long as it took Howard Dean to go from human rights crusader to insurance lobbyist. But the reason for my political disaffection is plain: I’ve spent my entire Millennial life watching the Democratic Party claw its way up the ass of corporate America. There’s no persuading me that the Democratic establishment — from where it sits now — has the capacity to represent me, or my values.

    Source: Feeling the Yern: Why the Kids Are All Right About Bernie Sanders | Village Voice

    “Intelligent people know that the empire is on the downhill”: A veteran CIA agent spills the goods on the Deep State and our foreign policy nightmares – Salon.com

    I first heard Ray McGovern speak on a country road in the New England hills. This was courtesy of the admirably dedicated David Barsamian, who broadcast one of McGovern’s talks on Alternative Radio in late-2013. Reception up here being spotty, I pulled over and sat watching the autumn clouds drift by for the full hour McGovern stood at the podium of a Methodist church in Seattle. I was rapt.

    What a lost pleasure it is in our indispensable nation to be in the presence of someone who thinks, acts and speaks out of conscience and conviction. Even better, these were precisely McGovern’s topics that day three years back: The necessity of careful thought, of honoring one’s inner voice, of acting out of an idea of what is right without regard to success or failure, the win-or-lose of life. One way or another, these themes run through everything he has to say, I have since discovered. At an inner-city church in Washington, McGovern teaches a course he calls “The Morality of Whistleblowing.”

    Source: “Intelligent people know that the empire is on the downhill”: A veteran CIA agent spills the goods on the Deep State and our foreign policy nightmares – Salon.com