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'Exhausted' honour student shown no mercy and jailed for truancy... Works two jobs to support family | Mail Online

Honour student who works two jobs to support her siblings after her parents split up and left town is put in JAIL for missing school due to exhaustion

  • Diane Tran, 17, thrown in jail for one night because of repeated absences from school
  • Honours student has been working two jobs to keep family afloat since parents' divorce
  • Has been taking advanced placement and college courses in addition to jobs and missed school due to exhaustion
  • Spent the night in jail for truancy

By Hannah Rand

PUBLISHED: 15:22 EST, 25 May 2012 | UPDATED: 19:37 EST, 25 May 2012

An eleventh grader in Texas was thrown in jail - just for missing school.

However, honour student Diane Tran, 17, is no lazy truant. In fact, she's quite the opposite.

Since her parents divorced and left her and her two siblings, she has been the sole breadwinner and works two jobs to keep the family afloat.

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Devastated: Diane Tran, 17, has a criminal record and spent a night in jail after being charged with truancy. She works two jobs to support her family

Devastated: Diane Tran, 17, has a criminal record and spent a night in jail after being charged with truancy. She works two jobs to support her family

Abandoned: Tran says she 'loves school', but is so exhausted from her workload that she often misses an entire day

Abandoned: Her parents divorced 'out of the blue' and left Tran and her two siblings to fend for themselves

Ms Tran said she works a full time job, a part-time job, and takes advancement and dual credit college level courses at Willis High School.

'[I take] dual credit U.S. history, dual credit English literacy, college algebra, Spanish language AP,' she says of her impressive academic workload.

However, the high-achiever cannot devote as much time as she would like to her schooling as she often misses an entire day, reports KHOU.

Ms Tran says that her parents divorced 'out of the blue,' leaving her and her two siblings to fend for themselves.

'I always thought our family was happy,' she said.

Now, it's up to Ms Tran to support her siblings, who include an older brother at Texas A&M University and a younger sister who lives with relatives.

Honour student: Tran works a full time job, a part-time job and takes advancement and dual credit college level courses at Willis High School near Houston, Texas

Honour student: Tran works a full time job, a part-time job and takes advancement and dual credit college level courses at Willis High School near Houston, Texas

Harsh: Judge Lanny Moriarty also ordered Tran to pay a $100 fine but others are asking that he shows leniency on the school girl

Harsh: Judge Lanny Moriarty also ordered Tran to pay a $100 fine but others are asking that he shows leniency on the school girl

Local authorities are using Ms Tran's case to crackdown on truancy.

Judge Lanny Moriarty ordered the exhausted student to pay a $100 fine and spend 24 hours in jail as a lesson.

ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY: TEXAS TRUANCY LAWS

According to Texas state law, students who are absent from school without parental consent for three days in a four-week period or ten or more days in a six-month period are subject to prosecution.

Parents of children who miss excessive amounts of school may also be prosecuted.

'If you let one [truant student] run loose, what are you gonna' do with the rest of 'em? Let them go too?' asked Judge Moriarty.

He had warned her last month to stop missing her classes.

Ms Tran's employer at the Waverly Manor wedding venue, where Tran works during the weekend, suggested that the authorities should 'help [the family], don't harm them'.

Ms Tran also works full-time at a dry cleaners. Her co-worker and classmate Devin Hill told the network how hard her friend works.

'She goes from job to job, from school, she stays up 'til 7 o'clock in the morning to study' she said.

On the homepage of the school's website, there is a warning to students to be vigilant about their attendance.

'Should a student have multiple unexcused absences and a pattern of failing to attend school regularly, the law is clear that the matter becomes the jurisdiction of the court system,' it states.

However, locals are arguing that Ms Tran's case is unique and should be treated with more leniency.

Ms Tran, in the meantime, is worried this could mar her future ambitions - she one day hopes to become a doctor.

Watch the video:

Video | News | Weather | Sports

Thu May 24 17:37:03 PDT 2012

Honor student placed in jail for tardiness and truancy at school

A judge threw a 17-year-old 11th grade honor student from Willis High School in jail after she missed school again. view full article


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She deserves a medal.kids like this should get goverment help, not the "single mothers"of 10 that are bums, I am so angry with the Judge, and hope that the Vietnamese community shuns the parents. I do not know what is going , parents kiliing their children, abandoning and this girls stands to support a brother and sister. I see all kinds of kids in the Malls during school hours. SHAME ON THE JUDGE.

- Carmen, Dallas US, 26/5/2012 23:09

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That judge is a heartless B@$7a(! Hope he rots in hell.

- Kelly J, san Diego, USA, 26/5/2012 22:16

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To liz of Huntsville, Alabama: no, I do not "hate" all judges as up you suggested. That retort is the reply of the uninformed and used by oppressors. I think judges are vested with too much powers over the lives of the American citizens. They have elevated themselves into a world of their own fiefdom, brooking dissent or even a hint of disrespect. Have you noticed before his or her audience sits or rises as ordered, this figure in an imposing dark robe will sit behind a podium 2 to 3 feet above your eye-level, so you have to stare meekly up as if pleading for mercy? These arrangements are not by accidents, but by design to intimidate, awe, shock to respect this Demi-god. The legal fraternity has no check and balances. They are the "law". Something has to change. Liz, you are too young, but during the late 60s I was a young medic in the US army, many Americans said: " America, right or wrong, if wrong, fix it" we did. we left Vietnam. Unfortunately fixing the justice system is harder

- Bill, Calif, 26/5/2012 21:34

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Just keeping us safe and in order! Anyone who believes we aren't living in a po-po state just hasn't been paying enough attention.

- Nikki, USA, 26/5/2012 21:34

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I wanted to add a few words to my earlier comments.Every single adult has failed this young lady. Instead of throwing her in jail which now gives her criminal record,while other 17 year old's steal,smoke pot and end up in juvenile detention after all they are not considered adults who then have sealed records ,this young lady now has a record which can keep her out of ivy league universities,get other jobs ,especially where security clearances are needed .I'm truly just disgusted the school officials plus this judge did not do the the right thing .It is obvious that this young lady also needs counseling to help her get over her grief of the sudden breakup/disappearance of her parents. The ones that need to be in jail are her parents for abandoning her and her younger sibling and for the truancy situation.I think we should contact the governor of Texas and complain,her record needs to be cleared so it won't stand in her way of her achievements.

- HC, USA, 26/5/2012 21:25

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It sounds like BS, I see no signs of fatigue in her face, no under eye bags or metal absence. Most of my college friends that barely sleep for days because they study for long periods of time. After a few days you ask them a question and takes them about 30 seconds to process the question and answer. I believe she is advanced and probably don't want to waist her time in class learning something she already know therefore she rather work, but the lame excuse of fending for an older brother sounds ridiculous, he is in college there are a bunch of opportunities there for work, work study, fellowships, etc. The younger sister is not a toddler to be constantly looking after her plus she lives with relatives. Last time I check it's against the law to leave minors in this country to live by themselves before the age of 18, she deserves to go to jail for trying to fool the system and so does her parents for leaving them alone. - Jay Zilla, Cerritos,CA, 26/05/2012 17:34 Hows life on Mars..

- I Feel, For Her, 26/5/2012 21:06

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This poor girl needs help from a sensible caring society and deserves a medal for the way she has supported her siblings, not punishment. Rules are there for the protection of all, but a just and concerned judge can apply the law appropriately. Clearly not in this case . . . or maybe there was some sense in the imprisonment . . . at least she had the chance to get a night's sleep! Where are their parents? Where are the adults who should have been looking out for her welfare? And WHY was a 17 year old schoolgirl working to support her university-age brother and younger sister? Judge Moriarty is a frightening example of someone who has no understanding of real life sitting in an ivory tower dispensing his limited wisdom. One more comment - Diane Tran, any university or employer will be very fortunate to have you as part of their team and I for one would feel honoured to know you. Rant over.

- me here, at home, home, 26/5/2012 20:50

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This poor girl needs help from a sensible caring society and deserves a medal for the way she has supported her siblings, not punishment. Rules are there for the protection of all, but a just and concerned judge can apply the law appropriately. Clearly not in this case . . . or maybe there was some sense in the imprisonment . . . at least she had the chance to get a night's sleep! Where are their parents? Where are the adults who should have been looking out for her welfare? And WHY was a 17 year old schoolgirl working to support her university-age brother and younger sister? Judge Moriarty is a frightening example of someone who has no understanding of real life sitting in an ivory tower dispensing his limited wisdom. One more comment - Diane Tran, any university or employer will be very fortunate to have you as part of their team and I for one would feel honoured to know you. Rant over.

- me here, at home, home, 26/5/2012 20:47

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This is outrageous. Once again the public school system has failed to support a student. Where is the principal and guidance counselors that we pay. They need to do their job. This should have never happened to a student. The judge also failed this student by not holding the school accountable to getting the student some help. It will be a shame if she has a record and can't get into college. Why happened to the parents? Are they not responsible for abandoning their child? I am really disappoint in the system. The judge, the principal and the school guidance counselors need to be held responsible for not helping this student.

- LaQuetha, Austin, USA, 26/5/2012 20:44

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mimi, USA, 26/5/2012 19:31- right wing fascism?? Mimi, you ned to read history and learn where fascism comes from. But you are right about this young lady having to work and hold down two jobs to support her siblings. But then, that's life. If you want to get off real life. Go ask Obama to take control of your life.

- Nonpc, Toytown,UK, 26/5/2012 20:04

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via dailymail.co.uk

Posted May 26, 2012
 

Robert Reich (Memorial Day Thoughts on National Defense)

We can best honor those who have given their lives for this nation in combat by making sure our military might is proportional to what America needs.

The United States spends more on our military than do China, Russia, Britain, France, Japan, and Germany put together.

With the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the cost of fighting wars is projected to drop – but the “base” defense budget (the annual cost of paying troops and buying planes, ships, and tanks – not including the costs of actually fighting wars) is scheduled to rise. The base budget is already about 25 percent higher than it was a decade ago, adjusted for inflation.

One big reason: It’s almost impossible to terminate large defense contracts. Defense contractors have cultivated sponsors on Capitol Hill and located their plants and facilities in politically important congressional districts. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and others have made spending on national defense into America’s biggest jobs program.

So we keep spending billions on Cold War weapons systems like nuclear attack submarines, aircraft carriers, and manned combat fighters that pump up the bottom lines of defense contractors but have nothing to do with 21st-century combat.

For example, the Pentagon says it wants to buy fewer F-35 joint strike fighter planes than had been planned – the single-engine fighter has been plagued by cost overruns and technical glitches – but the contractors and their friends on Capitol Hill promise a fight.

The absence of a budget deal on Capitol Hill is supposed to trigger an automatic across-the-board ten-year cut in the defense budget of nearly $500 billion, starting January.

But Republicans have vowed to restore the cuts. The House Republican budget cuts everything else — yet brings defense spending back up. Mitt Romney’s proposed budget does the same.

Yet even if the scheduled cuts occur, the Pentagon is still projected to spend over $2.7 trillion over the next ten years.

At the very least, hundreds of billions could be saved without jeopardizing the nation’s security by ending weapons systems designed for an age of conventional warfare. We should shrink the F-35 fleet of stealth fighters. Cut the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons, ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. And take a cleaver to the Navy and Air Force budgets. (Most of the action is with the Army, Marines and Special Forces.) 

At a time when Medicare, Medicaid, and non-defense discretionary spending (including most programs for the poor, as well as infrastructure and basic R&D) are in serious jeopardy, Obama and the Democrats should be calling for even more defense cuts.

A reasonable and rational defense budget would be a fitting memorial to those who have given their lives so we may remain free. 

via robertreich.org

Posted May 26, 2012
 

9 Great Freethinkers and Religious Dissenters in History | | AlterNet

May 24, 2012  |  

Photo Credit: Krylova Ksenia / Shutterstock.com

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What kind of world would we have if a majority of the human race was atheist?

To hear religious apologists tell it, the triumph of atheism would mean a swift descent into selfishness and chaos. The defenders of the faith argue that atheism inevitably leads to selfishness and nihilism, and that only religion can justify charity or compassion, bind people together in community, or inspire a lively and flourishing culture. But this assertion can only be sustained by ignoring the accomplishments of famous nonreligious people throughout history, of which there have been many.

To dispel the myth that nonbelievers have never contributed anything of worth or value to human civilization, I want to highlight some who've left their mark in the arts, the sciences and the humanities. Demonstrating that the godless count distinguished members of the human race among our numbers is a way to fight back against this prejudice and to demonstrate that we, too, have a historical legacy we can be proud of.

Not all of the people profiled here were strict atheists, but all of them were freethinkers, a broader umbrella term that embraces a rainbow of unorthodoxy, religious dissent, skepticism, and unconventional thinking. It's no surprise that so many influential thinkers and creative types have come from the ranks of these intellectual revolutionaries. Organized religion tends to reward people not for thinking creatively or critically, but for reciting and defending the dogmas of the previous generation. Throughout human history, it has consistently been true that hidebound theocracies have been mired in poverty, backwardness and intellectual stagnation, whereas the most dramatic advances have come about in times and places where people had the freedom to think for themselves, to freely question and debate. The lives of the men and women recounted here bear testimony to this.

1. Albert Einstein. The archetypal scientific genius, Einstein inaugurated a revolution in physics that bears fruit to this day. His theories and equations undergird the 20th century: technologies from nuclear power to GPS satellites only exist because of his discoveries. But beyond his impressive scientific contributions, he was known as a peacemaker and civil-rights advocate: he was one of the first to warn the world of the dangers of Nazism, joined anti-lynching campaigns, publicly opposed McCarthyism, and called for nuclear disarmament worldwide. Later in life, he was offered the presidency of Israel but turned it down, saying that he was unqualified.

Einstein famously made statements like, "God does not play dice with the universe" that have inspired religious apologists to try to claim him as their own, but on other occasions, he made it clear that this was nothing but poetic metaphor. He made his views known in letters, writing, for example: "I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." On another occasion, he wrote, "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

2. Robert Ingersoll. One of the most famous Americans most people today have never heard of, Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, known in his lifetime as the "Great Agnostic," once commanded national fame and renown. In an era before television and radio, public oratory was the leading form of entertainment, and Ingersoll set the gold standard. He was one of the most sought-after speakers in the country; he drew crowds of thousands, and on one occasion, after hearing him speak, Mark Twain observed, "What an organ is human speech when it is employed by a master!"

He was a staunch abolitionist who served honorably for the Union in the Civil War, and went on to advocate progressive causes like free speech, women's rights, anti-racism and the abolition of corporal punishment. Though politicians repeatedly sought his endorsement and his rhetorical talents, the highest position that Ingersoll himself ever held was the attorney general of Illinois -- due, no doubt, to his willingness to eloquently express his freethought views. In a eulogy, the New York Times observed that only his outspoken irreligious views kept him from taking "that place in the... public life of his country to which by his talents he would otherwise have been eminently entitled." Not that Ingersoll himself would have wanted it any other way: as he declared, a truly spiritual man "attacks what he believes to be wrong, though defended by the many, and he is willing to stand for the right against the world."

3. W.E.B. DuBois. Contrary to popular impression, the black community in America has a long tradition of involvement with freethought and secularism, as exemplified by one of its most influential racial-justice activists, W.E.B. DuBois. One of the first black men to get a Ph.D. from Harvard, DuBois was one of the founders of the NAACP and a prolific and critically praised writer, educator and historian.

By DuBois' own account, he was raised religious and attended an orthodox missionary college, but his doubts about religion blossomed while studying in Europe. When he returned to America, he taught at a black Methodist college, Wilberforce University, but drew the wrath of school administrators for refusing to lead students in prayer. As Susan Jacoby quotes him in her book Freethinkers, "I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war." He also said he wanted "to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds."

4. Zora Neale Hurston. Like DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston was an influential black freethinker and an acclaimed early 20th-century author. She attended Columbia University on a scholarship, and while living in Manhattan at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, met scholars and artists like Margaret Mead and Langston Hughes. She herself wrote both fiction and anthropological works about the black community. Her masterwork, the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, was judged one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

In her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston makes her freethought views clear and denies that the prospect of nonexistence after death holds any fear for her: 

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws... It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men?

5. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Although no one person deserves sole credit for laying the groundwork for the 19th Amendment, Elizabeth Cady Stanton comes close. Stanton organized and shepherded one of the pivotal early events in the suffrage movement, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, and she played a key role in issuing the famous Declaration of Sentiments that first called for women's suffrage (against the wishes of other attendees, some of whom felt that demanding the vote was too radical even for them).

Despite a lifetime of organizing and lobbying for women's suffrage, Stanton was often shunted aside by her own movement for her controversial, outspoken freethought views and her attacks on religion as a major justification for the continued oppression of women, including her scathing The Woman's Bible. On one occasion, she wrote, "I have endeavoured to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at least that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church."

Some of Stanton's spiritual descendants in the feminist movement had similarly irreligious views. One of the most famous was Margaret Sanger, one of the founders of Planned Parenthood and a fearless crusader in the fight to make birth control available and legal to American women. Sanger's motto was "No Gods, No Masters," and her newsletter had the memorable title The Woman Rebel.

6. Asa Philip Randolph. The 20th-century American civil rights movement is often identified with Christianity, which is almost single-handedly due to the influence of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But secular humanists played almost as important a role. One of them was Asa Philip Randolph, a trailblazing labor organizer whose career spanned the 20th century and who was one of the pioneers of the strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Randolph entered the civil-rights movement by way of the labor movement, beginning by organizing mainly black railroad workers. But he soon set his sights higher, especially as the country was drawn into World War II and the defense industry was booming. He took the lead in organizing civil-rights marches that convinced presidents Roosevelt and Truman to issue executive orders ending segregation in defense contractors and the armed services. As his star rose, he served as vice president of the AFL-CIO and helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

In addition to all this, Randolph was a lifelong freethinker. He was the founder of a literary magazine, The Messenger, whose masthead declared that "Prayer is not one of our remedies... We consider prayer as nothing more than a fervent wish." He was also one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto in 1970.

7. Robert Frost. New England's most famous poet is justly immortalized for his poetic tributes to nature and rural life, but his religious skepticism is lesser known. Frost's views on God are complex; for much of his life, he grappled with a deep-seated superstitious fear he could never fully shake. But after 20 years of marriage, his wife said that he was an atheist, and he didn't deny it.

What's interesting is that this comes through inadvertently in his poetry. When speaking of his fellow human beings and their relationships, Frost is warm, welcoming, thoroughly humanist. But when he turns to the subject of God, he more often than not becomes dark and terrifying, depicting the idea of a deity as a savage force of nature more than a worthy object of reverence. His famous poem "Design" calls the suffering and predation in nature a "design of darkness." The poem "Once by the Pacific," Frost's vision of the apocalypse, has the poet looking out at crashing ocean waves and envisioning them as a harbinger of doomsday. The poem "A Loose Mountain" envisions God as a cosmic destroyer waiting to hurl a meteor at the Earth, like a stone thrown from a sling, biding his time so he can release it when it will cause the maximum amount of devastation.

8. Emma Lazarus. Like Robert Frost, Emma Lazarus was a poet whose words have defined the American experience. She may not have as many classics to her name, but her one crowning achievement may be even better known than any of his: her poem "The New Colossus," best known as the words engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." The statue was originally a symbol of republicanism, but Lazarus' poem recast it as a beacon for immigrants from all over the world. Even when America has fallen short of this ideal, these words remind us that we can do better and inspire us to work for positive change.

Lazarus came from a Jewish background, but she was known as a freethinker. As the Jewish Virtual Library records, on one occasion she told a rabbi who asked her to contribute to a hymn book, "I shall always be loyal to my race, but I feel no religious fervor in my soul."

9. Yip Harburg. E.Y. "Yip" Harburg isn't a household name, but some of his works are. Harburg was the Broadway lyricist who wrote the words to some of America's most memorable and culturally significant songs, including "It's Only a Paper Moon," "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" and all the music from The Wizard of Oz, including "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Harburg was known as "Broadway's social conscience" for the progressive messages of his songs and musicals, including "Bloomer Girl" and "Hooray for What," which advocated feminism and anti-war themes respectively. At one point he was blacklisted by McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee, but kept working for the stage even as he was barred from television and film. He said in a biography, "The House of God never had much appeal for me. Anyhow, I found a substitute temple -- the theater."

For more famous historical freethinkers, see my series "The Contributions of Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby's book, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, or Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History.

 

via alternet.org

Posted May 26, 2012
 

If you are elderly and poor, prison is better than a retirement home

If you are elderly and poor, prison is better than a retirement home

If you are in old age, with no family and little money, your options are slim if you need living assistance.

Wasting away at home is a tragic possibility and government funded retirement homes might only be an option once your assets are depleted. Would you be better off committing a crime and going to prison where you receive food, clothing, and medical care? We decided to find out.

Regardless of your state, province, or national government, going into old age and needing care while holding little or no individual assets is a dicey situation. Would you be better off in a prison than a retirement home if you lack financial assets or family?

The Pros of Prison
Let's look at some of the positives of incarceration. Prison is cheap (if not free), provides a steady supply of food, a relatively high level of healthcare, and some social interaction. In the best situations, you could take classes for college credit, learn a new trade, or spend your days catching up on television.

While standards and settings can change from prison to prison, if you find yourself in a minimum security Federal prison, your quality of life will be pretty good. While you can't pick your roommate or the denizens of your cell block or leave, your status as an elderly individual (and hopefully your lack of violent crimes) will likely land you amongst criminals of a similar threat level (i.e., low). Depending on the facility, you might even be able to roam park-like portion of the grounds. Policies do exist to accrue inmate housing costs from personal finances, but if you lack assets, this will not be a problem for you.

Federal prisons, at least in the United States, are a much safer place than state prisons. Federal prisons are often home to white-collar, non-violent offenders, and violent attacks occur at less than half the rate of state prisons. These prisons are typically located on or near military installations (like FPC Montgomery on the grounds of Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama), where prisoners can work in clerical positions and even take in a movie at the serviceman's theater on the grounds of the base.

The Trouble with Retirement Homes
In prison, inmates are in an offensive position - their rights and standards of care are outlined extensively. Prisoners have access to personal or public defenders, and, in some cases, fully stocked law libraries. The government is required to maintain a proper level of care for inmates, with prisoners free to make due process arguments concerning quality of life in an established manner.

Retirement homes, however, can be a little different. Quality of life within retirement and assisted living homes varies dramatically from facility to facility and experience to experience. Your care givers might be great, checking on you at regular internals daily and aiming to create the best living situation possible, or you might find yourself in a facility looking to maximize profit at the expense of your lifestyle and comfort.

Negligence is sadly a way of life in some retirement homes; a way of life difficult to replicate in the prison system thanks to the stratified age of its population and nearly constant observation. Laws exist to fight retirement home negligence, but retirement home patients often fear retribution if they or their families bring up problems with care, allowing for suppression of abuse and negligence in the institution and placing the patient in a defensive position.

Retirement home stays can cost close to $6,000 a month, with the elderly often losing all of their assets in order to pay for care in the last few years of their life. When an individual's assets run out in the United States, Medicaid kicks in to pay for retirement home costs, but only at certain government approved facilities. If you do have assets that you passed on to family members or friends, Medicaid can seize those assets if they come within the "lookback" period of three years.

If you are elderly and poor, prison is better than a retirement home How to Get Behind Bars Safely
Going a route like check fraud, counterfeiting, or identify theft could place you in a Federal prison for several years - not such a bad place considering the options of wasting away alone and with no finances.

You could even go on an adventure and steal a major piece of art from a museum - everybody wants to go on a heist at some point in their lives, right? Federal prison sentences are often mandatory, removing the possibility of parole and keeping you on the inside for several years.

A retirement or assisted living home is certainly an improvement over living alone if you can't care for yourself. But when I am old, lacking family, friends, or finances, find me a seat in a Federal prison to live out the rest of my days. I'll be a good inmate, I promise. Or maybe I should become a part of the 5% of North America purchasing long term care insurance, which would help pay for a higher-end nursing home should I need one.


The top image is a construction using images by Andrew Bardwell/CC and Etan J. Tal/CC. Additional image courtesy of FPC Alderson. Sources linked within the article.

via io9.com

Posted May 25, 2012
 

BBC News - Earliest music instruments found

25 May 2012 Last updated at 07:03 ET

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Earliest music instruments found

Mammoth ivory flute One of the flutes has been fashioned from mammoth ivory

Researchers have identified what they say are the oldest-known musical instruments in the world.

The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, come from a cave in southern Germany which contains early evidence for the occupation of Europe by modern humans - Homo sapiens.

Scientists used carbon dating to show that the flutes were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old.

The findings are described in the Journal of Human Evolution.

A team led by Prof Tom Higham at Oxford University dated animal bones in the same ground layers as the flutes at Geissenkloesterle Cave in Germany's Swabian Jura.

Prof Nick Conard, the Tuebingen University researcher who identified the previous record-holder for oldest instrument in 2009, was excavator at the site.

He said: "These results are consistent with a hypothesis we made several years ago that the Danube River was a key corridor for the movement of humans and technological innovations into central Europe between 40,000-45,000 years ago.

"Geissenkloesterle is one of several caves in the region that has produced important examples of personal ornaments, figurative art, mythical imagery and musical instruments."

Musical instruments may have been used in recreation or for religious ritual, experts say.

And some researchers have argued that music may have been one of a suite of behaviours displayed by our species which helped give them an edge over the Neanderthals - who went extinct in most parts of Europe 30,000 years ago.

Music could have played a role in the maintenance of larger social networks, which may have helped our species expand their territory at the expense of the more conservative Neanderthals.

The researchers say the dating evidence from Geissenkloesterle suggests that modern humans entered the Upper Danube region before an extremely cold climatic phase at around 39,000-40,000 years ago.

Previously, researchers had argued that modern humans initially migrated up the Danube immediately after this event.

"Modern humans during [this] period were in central Europe at least 2,000-3,000 years before this climatic deterioration, when huge icebergs calved from ice sheets in the northern Atlantic and temperatures plummeted," said Prof Higham.

"The question is what effect this downturn might have had on the people in Europe at the time."

via bbc.co.uk

Posted May 25, 2012
 

Dangerous Minds | Cassette tape coffee table


 
A brilliant and beautifully executed wood cassette tape coffee table by artist Jeff Skerka.

This coffee table is a 12:1 scaled replica of a cassette tape. It is made of reclaimed maple, walnut and lucite. Dimensions are 47.25” x 30” x 5” with a 3/8” plexi top. This is a first prototype and one of a kind table. Future versions will be CNC machined out of high grade plywood with a variety of ply combinations and a glass top. This table has been an obsession of mine for 5 years! It is amazing to finally have it come to fruition. The table is completely reversible (sides A and B).

I’m not sure Jeff’s “Mixtape Table” is a one-of-kind prototype or others have been made to purchase? You can contact him here to find out.


 
Via KMFW

via dangerousminds.net

Posted May 25, 2012
 

Capitalism Has Failed: 5 Bold Ways to Build a New World | | AlterNet

May 16, 2012  |  

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As our political system sputters, a wave of innovative thinking and bold experimentation is quietly sweeping away outmoded economic models. In New Economic Visions, a special five-part AlterNet series edited by economics editor Lynn Parramore in partnership with political economist Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, creative thinkers come together to explore the exciting ideas and projects that are shaping the philosophical and political vision of the movement that could take our economy back.

The problem, in a nutshell, is this: The old economic model has utterly failed us. It has destroyed our communities, our democracy, our economic security, and the planet we live on. The old industrial-age systems -- state communism, fascism, free-market capitalism -- have all let us down hard, and growing numbers of us understand that going back there isn't an option.

But we also know that transitioning to some kind of a new economy -- and, probably, a new governing model to match -- will be a civilization-wrenching process. We're having to reverse deep and ancient assumptions about how we allocate goods, labor, money, and power on a rapidly shrinking, endangered, complex, and ever more populated planet. We are bolding taking the global economy -- and all 7 billion souls who depend on it -- where no economy has ever gone before.

Right now, all we have to guide us forward are an emerging set of new values and imperatives. The new system can't incentivize economic growth for its own sake, or let monopolies form and flourish. It should be as democratic as possible, but with strong mechanisms in place that protect the common wealth and the common good. It needs to put true costs to things, and hold people accountable for their actions. Above all, it needs to be rooted in the deep satisfactions -- community, nature, family, health, creativity -- that have been the source of real human happiness for most of our species' history.

As we peer out into this future, we can catch glimmers and shadows -- the first dim outlines of things that might become part of the emerging picture over the next few decades. Within this far-ranging conversation, a few dominant themes crop up over and over again. For the final chapter in this series, we'll discuss five robust visions that are forming the conceptual bridge on which our next steps toward the future are being taken.

Small Is Beautiful

Many people imagining our next economy are swept up in the romance of a return to a localized or regionalized economy, where wealth is built by local people creatively deploying local resources to meet local needs.

Relocalization is a way to restore the autonomy, security and control that have been lost now that almost every aspect of our lives has been co-opted by big, centralized, corporate-controlled systems. By bringing everything back to a more human scale, this story argues, we'll enable people to connect with their own creativity, their communities and each other. Alienation and isolation will dissipate. We'll have more time for family and friends, really free enterprise and more satisfying work. Our money will be our own, accumulated by us and re-invested in things we value. And it'll be a serious corrective to our delusional ideas about what constitutes real wealth, too.

This vision is deeply beloved. It's front and center in both the resilience and Transition Towns movement. You hear it from foodies who extol the virtues of local food, Slow Money investors who back local banks and businesses instead of Wall Street, community gardeners, and 10 million Makers. David Korten argues that capitalism is actually the enemy of truly free markets -- the kind where anybody with ideas and initiative can make a tidy living working for herself, doing something she loves. And that kind of freedom is, very naturally, small in scale.

This vision is also seductive. It holds out the promise that if people dare to let go of what they have and reach out to the future, there's a better life waiting within their grasp -- a core piece of any effective change story.  However, this model also has a few problems that haven't yet been engaged by most of its proponents, but which compromise its ability to serve as a global framework.

First: the infrastructure that will enable us to relocalize isn't thick on the ground right now. City and regional governments across the country are broke, devastated by the devaluation of their tax bases. Ironically, relocalizing may require significant federal investment -- but do we really think that the corporations that control our federal government will actually back a model that will ultimately undercut the economic and political chokehold they have on us? It seems unlikely.

Also, localization often involves trade-offs between making things efficiently -- which, in the industrial age, has meant making them in large, centralized factories -- and resilience. Making stuff locally in small batches increases resilience, and decentralizing the process means that many more people will have jobs. For example: A single factory farmer can manage thousands of acres. An organic farm might have half a dozen workers on just 20 acres.

But the fact remains that our world depends on at least a few large, complex systems (the Internet, for example) that require national or even international coordination to manage properly. Where does that coordination come from when all the power is pushed down to the regional level? Also, many of our biggest problems -- climate change, damage to the oceans, loss of species, the threat of epidemics and extreme weather events -- also require a larger and more coordinated response than any one city or region can mount. In a relocalized world, who has the authority to manage these problems?

Furthermore, what becomes of our currently high national and global standards on things like civil rights, infrastructure codes and the environment when all the power is devolved to local governments? Some places will no doubt forge ahead and raise the bar even further, but it's not hard to imagine that quite a few others will be all too glad to get back to oppressing their minorities and raping the land.

These are questions that few theorists, so far, have addressed, but it's possible they may be answered in time. A lot of the people doing the best work on relocalization right now are young, and the new enterprises they're building are untried and new. As they grow in skill and experience, and their trust in these structures grows, they may find ways to start scaling up.

Marx 2.0

Another group of theorists are updating Marx for the 21st century, proffering models that put both control and profit of enterprises into the workers' hands. In some of these, workers are also owners, with a full stake in the success or failure of the business. In others (such as the one proposed by philosopher David Schwiekart, which was based on Yugoslavia's industrial policy), the state is the owner and primary investor in the business. The workers lease the means of production, run the business, return some of the proceeds to the government, and distribute the rest of the profit between themselves.

Ironically, most of these schemes share capitalism's biggest flaw, which is its inherent reliance on growth. As a business owner, it's very hard to say, "We're big enough now. Let's stop here." (Though some, like Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, have done just that.) Most businesses have competitors who, if they're allowed to get bigger than you, will swallow you whole. If you don't stay big enough to compete, you don't survive -- and since the competitors are facing the same imperative, the race can never really end.

As noted, this kind of constant growth simply isn't sustainable on a finite planet. People will always trade -- it's an essential human activity -- but going forward, we need small-scale businesses that can stay happy and healthy without being pushed to grow. Worker ownership doesn't really address this problem, though relocalization, which roots businesses deeply in their own local markets, limiting their reach beyond those boundaries, may provide one natural brake on growth.

For many large and necessary enterprises (utilities; essential centralized manufacturing; big, capital-intensive tech industries; and so on) public ownership may be the only way to ensure that they grow no bigger than they need to be to fulfill their mission. If there are other solutions that will allow us to have complex enterprises minus the growth imperative, they're still lurking out beyond the horizon.

Systems Theory

One of the great breakthroughs in human understanding over the past 40 years has been the realization that all complex systems -- economic, political, biological, mechanical, environmental, or social -- behave according to a simple set of common principles. The rules that govern the behavior of one set of systems usually apply to other kinds of systems as well.

For example, much of what we've learned about how ecosystems work is now informing new thinking about the economy. Successful enterprises don't exist in a vacuum. They only thrive in interdependent communities of customers, suppliers, investors, employees, and related businesses. The most economically productive places -- for example, Silicon Valley -- are as dense in these interrelationships as old-growth forests are. This complex landscape allows for endless combinations of new interactions, which in turn leads to constant, easy, productive innovation. At the same time: these ecosystems are every bit as susceptible to thoughtless disruption when some critical element is disturbed.

This new awareness of the intense interdependence within healthy economies undercuts the "rugged individualist/self-made man" story that undergirds conservative economics. Seeing the world in systems makes it abundantly clear that no individual or enterprise ever succeeds on its own, or that one business alone can bring about the kind of change we need. Fostering healthy economies is the work of generations, and thanks to systems theory, we understand more about how to build them than we ever did before.

A World Like the Web

A related framework, which is being driven by technologists rather than economists, posits that economic systems like capitalism, fascism and communism all belong to an industrial age that's now passing. In the old era, we saw the world through the metaphor of the machine. Our systems were static piles of unchanging parts that you designed, defined, tinkered with, and deployed toward a desired result.

This framework argues that our transition to the Information Age (which includes not just the Internet revolution, but other technologies like nanotech, biotech, 3D printing, and so on; and which will be playing out through the rest of this century, at minimum) will require us to rearrange our economic and political orders to more closely fit the Internet metaphor. Closely related to this are emerging human-centered economic models, like behavioral economics, which jettison the mechanistic "rational actor" assumption for a more nuanced and organic understanding of how human decision-making actually works.

In these models, the economy is seen as a series of simultaneously interrelated and self-sufficient nodes, each embedded in a complex matrix of relationships that are redundant and self-healing. These could easily be strong regional economies based on natural bioregional boundaries, which are then bound together in a tight global network that fosters robust trade in goods and ideas. The foundation of capital is ideas and information -- resources that don't deplete the physical wealth of the planet. Membership in the network increases scalability and adds extra layers of resilience.

This model also implies big changes in governance. It demands new constitutions that push control down to the local level, while also integrating these regional governments into the global network. If political power can move like the Internet, we might get the best of both worlds: the small-is-beautiful dream embedded in so many of the current alternative models, plus a genuine global governance structure that's capable of getting its arms around our biggest and most universal problems (like, say, managing the global commons, creating needed accountability, or intervening collectively when one regional node has a crisis of some kind). These new governments would also establish a raft of new rights and privileges, updated for this age.

It's implicitly understood that this leap will facilitate global investment in new infrastructure that will, in turn, enable the next advance in the complexity of human systems. Technology has introduced a deep-level paradigm shift that is rapidly destroying the current order, while also providing the ontological map that shows how the distribution of power, money, organization, governance, and control should play out in the next one.

Reform, Revolution, and Evolution

All of the above discussions are also being informed by an evolving understanding of how transformative social change happens.

As long as most people assume that market capitalism is sustainable,  they'll focus on reforming it -- cleaning it up around the edges, rewriting regulations, making it work in the public interest, and so on. Many Americans, in fact, still hope that this is all it will take-- that technology, political reform and market forces, working in some magic combination, will be enough to save us from ourselves.

Others among us are holding out for a full-on revolution that overthrows the whole system in one massive push, clearing the way for something entirely new. Revolutions are tricky, though: historically, a lot of them have gone sideways when the revolutionaries couldn't hang on through the chaotic aftermath of what they'd wrought. They often get swept away by some other force that's better organized, and thus better equipped to step in and take over. Anything can happen in the wake of a revolution, and all too often, it's not the thing you hoped for.

Gar Alperovitz offers "evolutionary reconstruction" as a better alternative to either reform or revolution. Visionaries from Gandhi to Buckminster Fuller have agreed with him. This model focuses our change energy on building new parallel institutions that will, in time, supplant the old ones. Don't fight the existing system, this strategy argues. Instead, just sidestep it entirely and create a new one. As the old system collapses under its own decay, yours will gradually fill in the gaps until it becomes the new dominant paradigm.

America's right wing has used this model very successfully to take control of our culture over the past 40 years. Starting in the 1970s, they invested in a wide range of parallel education systems, media outlets, professional organizations, government watchdog groups, and so on. These groups groomed a new generation of leaders, while also developing the intellectual, policy and cultural basis for the change they wanted to create. As time passed, they took advantage of opportunities to insert people and ideas from these alternative institutions into the mainstream ones. The result was that 90 percent of the conservative revolution took place almost entirely under the radar of most Americans. One day, we simply looked up to find them in charge of everything that mattered.

We lost the country this way. And we are well on our way to getting it back this way, too. As we steadily, carefully build a new set of enterprises, the new reality will inevitably and naturally take shape around us. There's nothing stopping us from starting co-ops or worker-owned businesses or triple-bottom-line corporations; we can do all of that today, in full faith that these businesses will be far better adapted to the future than the old capitalist forms we're seeking to supplant. In time, these structures will become the new normal, and people will barely remember that we ever did it any other way.

 

 

Sara Robinson, MS, APF is a social futurist and the editor of AlterNet's Vision page. Follow her on Twitter, or subscribe to AlterNet's Vision newsletter for weekly updates.
via alternet.org

Posted May 25, 2012
 

Dangerous Minds | Icon of Stupidity: Dumbest American (ever?) FOUND!


 
This will take your breath way!

Last night CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° show saw the debut on the world television stage of Stacey Pritchard, one of the pinhead Christianists who attends the Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina. Providence Road has been getting a lot of unwanted (?) attention lately due to Pastor Charles “Kill the Queers” Worley’s recent sermon there about putting gays and lesbians inside of an electric fence until they died. Last night Pritchard went on CNN to defend Worley and the result was TV magic!

It is AMAZING just how stubbornly impervious this woman is to basic facts. It’s like she has an impenetrable bubble all around her where no intelligence can get in or out (Only Cheetos, Mountain Dew and Domino’s pizza can pierce her force field of ignorance. I don’t know what happens on the other end and I don’t want to know).

Mark my words, this is a bravura, star-making appearance by one of American’s most dreadfully dumb people. Of course, I jest, there might be people stupider than Stacey in some dark “holler” of America, but do they have her sneering, know-nothing Tea party charisma? Her fashion sense? Her gift of gab?

I don’t think so. A STAR IS BORN.

This woman is already an ICON OF STUPIDITY, even if she (?) doesn’t know what that means…

Why, Stacey Pritchard, you just might be the female equivalent to Joe the Plumber! (Secretly I think you’re better than he is!). Please run for US Congress in your state (you’d win!) and caucus with Michele Bachmann, Allen West, Steve King and your North Carolina home girl/soul sister in MENSA, Virginia Foxx!

A Sarah Palin endorsement must be imminent.

“Hey Stacey, phone for you. A guy callin’ ‘eemself Roger Ailes wants to offer yew a contract on Fox News…”
 

 

via dangerousminds.net

Posted May 25, 2012
 

NIck Baxter: The Autopsy Art Opening at Last Rites Gallery « TAM Blog

NIck Baxter: The Autopsy Art Opening at Last Rites Gallery

On May 26th, 2012 Last Rites Gallery presents The Apostasy, new works by Nick Baxter, in what will be his second solo show at the gallery.

Nick Baxter’s technically demanding painting style dwells somewhere in between traditional sharp-focus still life and modern photorealist styles, while bringing in elements of symbolism and surrealism. His subject matter tends to center around close-ups of skin and visceral, bloody macro-scapes, in exploration of what it means to be human- to have a unique consciousness inhabiting a vessel of flesh and blood…

Click here for more information: http://www.lastritesgallery.com/baxter2012_pr.php

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via tattooartistmagazineblog.com

Posted May 25, 2012