I ran into this article titled “Does Language Shape the Way You Think?” that talks about how the vocabulary of your native tongue can affect how you conceptualize and relate to the world around you. I have heard of this before in reading about linguistics, but since I found an article on it I thought I would post it for everyone. It is fascinating stuff.

In light of the ignorance spewed here by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s  niece, Alveda King, below, I feel compelled to publish the following excerpt while Dr. King rolls in is own grave in embarrassment and furious anger.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from Birmingham Jail (more info at Wikipedia) that is quite pertinent to todays gay-rights movement:

…

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

…

Here is an update to my original post titled “Are you bored?“…

Let me guess. You are Bored. Let boredom bother you no longer with these free educational courses available online. If you find yourself saying that you are bored or overhear someone say that they are, slap them, and then point them henceforth:

• MIT Open Courseware
• California Open Source Textbook Project
• Textbook Revolution
• An open source Linear Algebra Textbook
• Quantum Physics Summer School from Bureau 42
• Open Textbook Repository
• A list of open source Math textbooks
• Get a Free College Education Online from Life Hacker
• Complete Works of Charles Darwin, The
• Dummies.com
• Library of Congress
• World Digital Library
• Dummies.com
• How Stuff Works?
• Project Gutenberg
• Wikipedia
• 10_power_tools_for_lifelong_learners (Open Culture)
• Khan Academy (You Tube)

Are you still Bored?

Take a look at the Live BLogging of the Closing Arguments for the Proposition 8 trial via Prop 8 Trial Tracker.  I have been very patiently waiting for this day.

You can find my previous comments on the Prop 8 atrocity them here if you are curious.

Here is an interesting article titled “Why I finally joined a church” on Salon about why a family finally joined a church after not having gone for so many years, and why they chose a Unitarian Universalist church.

Here is a very interesting article in the New York Times article titled “Human Culture, an Evolutionary Force“

For a couple of years, Green Power, Inc (GPI) has had a 100 ton per day model plant in Pasco, Washington that turns municipal solid waste (MSW) and other like feedstock such as biomass into high grade fuel.  This technology enables the replacement of limited, fossil-based oil with fuel that comes from garbage, which can be thought of as a form of free, sustainable energy, because as long as there are people on the planet, there will be waste.  What’s more, usually communities pay to get rid of it, so it is a cash-generating feedstock that with GPI’s technology produces a cash-generating product, self-powered by the process as well. …

GPI’s waste-to-fuel process validated by U.S. military (Examiner.com, 19 Feb 2010)

If this lives up to any of its claim, then all I can say is: Wow! US municipalities need to jump on this!

Here is a link to a live blog detailing the happenings at the Proposition 8 trial: Proposition 8 Trial Tracker BLog from the Courage Campaign.

Read it and get involved. This is one of the most important civil rights issues of our time.

Read about it and you be the judge:

• Uganda considers death sentence for gay sex in bill before parliament (Guardian UK, November 2009)
• Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill: Inspired by the U.S. (Time, December 2009)
• Taboos Silence Opponents Of Uganda Anti-Gay Bill (NPR, December 2009)
• Uganda’s bill to imprison gays for life is an outrage that should be rejected (Washington Post, January 2010)
• Op-Ed: Bearing False Witness in Uganda (HRC Backstory, January 2010)

Contact your legislators via HRC to let them know that this is not acceptable anywhere in the world.

I know what I am about to write here is bitterly sarcastic and angry… but here it is anyhow:

Congrats Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge! This must be a proud moment for you and your Fundamentalist Christian community. Bravo! Bravo! You have worked hard spreading ignorance and lies to ensure the deaths of more people. How proud you must be to know that you will soon have the potential death of many vile homo’s on your hands. Your “Godly” works are now responsible for promoting another tyrannical and oppressive regime like Iran and China where human rights are only a convenience for the state to play with and not a human right. I hope you enjoyed the participatory process in bringing about such stellar and model Christian legislation.

This article in Newsweek titled “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage
Why same-sex marriage is an American value” is written by Theodore Olson who is a prominent Republican lawyer that served under Bush and Reagan during their presidential administrations. He, along with David Boies, a prominent liberal lawyer, have taken it upon themselves to overturn Proposition 8 all the way to the Supreme Court.

This article states his reasons for taking up the Gay Marriage case with hopes of ending the discrimination and injustice in this country. The Republican party has been struggling with their identity and have been trying to find themselves again. I think that they should take up with Mr. Olson to find out where to go – Freedom, Justice, and Family and not persecutive religious dogmatic status quo’ism.

Please take the time to read his view point. It is very compelling. And if you are really bored you can read my scrawlings on the gay marriage issue too.

Here is a 5 page Psychology Today article titled Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature that follows very closely what I have read in the book about Evolutionary Psychology titled Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. Evolutionary Psychology is very interesting as always.

Thorium, which was abandoned in favor of Uranium due to its production of nuclear grade Plutonium, is now working to be the Green Nuclear Fuel of Choice.

Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke

Long live our new Thorium overlords.

I was not surprised to see this still an issue. In the pre-revolution days many of the colonies had religious tests as a requirement to hold office. They did out-law it at some point prior to the the uniting of the colonies, if I remember correctly, but still there remains these last remaining vestiges of Christian religious oppression. Fortunately, the Constitution is really clear on this and tells the state to suck it.

I do not watch the Fox series titled 24 with Kieffer Sutherland, but I know that those even those who do not find this darker holiday humor entertaining:

$300 Sci-Fi YouTube Video Lands $30m Movie Deal (Slashdot).

Even if it was made on $300 software… wow was it beautifully done… for the price.