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1 February 2008

Estevanico- Afrikan Muslim in America

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estevanico

Estevanico
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Estevanico (c. 1503 – 1539) a Muslim[1] (also known as "Mustafa Zemmouri", "Black Stephen", "Esteban", "Esteban the Moor", "Estevan", "Estebanico", "Stephen the Black", "Stephen the Moor", and "Little Stephen") was a Berber originally from Morocco, North Africa and one of the early explorers of the Southwestern United States. Born in the town of Azamor (Azemmour), a Portuguese enclave on Morocco's Atlantic coast from 1513 to 1541, Estevanico was enslaved by the Portuguese at an early age. He was sold in 1520 to Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, a Spanish nobleman with whom he developed close ties.
Estevanico travelled with Dorantes to Hispaniola and Cuba on Pánfilo de Narváez's ill-fated expedition of 1527 to conquer Florida; in doing so Estevanico became the first person born in Africa known to have set foot in what is now the continental United States. He and Dorantes were two of the expedition's four survivors, and had sailed with others on makeshift rafts in an attempt to reach Mexico. The group was shipwrecked on Galveston Island and most of the men either drowned, starved, or were killed by natives; by 1533 only Estevanico, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Alonso del Castillo Maldonado survived. The four spent years enslaved by the Ananarivo of the Louisiana Gulf Islands, but they eventually escaped into the American interior, contacting other Native American tribes along the way. The party traversed the continent as far as present-day southeastern Arizona, and through the Sonoran Desert to the region of Sinaloa in New Spain (present-day Mexico), where they were reunited with their countrymen.
In 1539, Estevanico was one of the four who would accompany Marcos de Niza as a guide in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, preceding Coronado. However, the others were struck ill and Estevanico continued alone, opening up what is now New Mexico and Arizona. He was killed at the Zuni village of Hawikuh (in present-day New Mexico); the tribe regarded him with mistrust, partially because his medicine gourd was trimmed with feathers from an owl, a bird that symbolized death to the Zuni...MORE

U.S. settles immigrant drugging suit - CNN.com

U.S. Settles Immigrant Drugging Suit
By Wayne Drash, CNN.com

"He was wrestled to the ground and injected through his clothes, he said. At the time, the federal agents said they administered the drugs to sedate him because he wouldn't follow their orders, a claim Diouf denies.

"That was a horrible experience," he said. "That experience alone was worse than the two years that I stayed in detention."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached a settlement with Diouf and Raymond Soeoth of Indonesia on Monday. As part of the agreement, Diouf will receive $50,000; Soeoth gets $5,000 and will be allowed to stay in the United States for at least two more years...SOURCE

Snow havoc losses mount to 53.8 bln yuan - People's Daily Online

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6349876.html
Snow havoc losses mount to 53.8 bln yuan
People's Daily Online
08:52, February 02, 2008

China is no stranger to natural disasters, but the heavy snow that strangled much of the country over the
past three weeks could be one of the most memorable because of its scope, duration and impact.
Millions, perhaps tens of millions have been suddenly thrown back to an era without most modern
conveniences and economic losses stand at about 53.8 billion yuan (7.5 billion U.S. dollars)...SOURCE

Inside Higher Ed:: Targeting 'The Lost Year'

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/31/secondyear

Targeting ‘The Lost Year’

In material sent to prospective freshmen, Miami University tells students to prepare for two years of living in the dorms. That hasn’t always been the case at the Ohio public institution. Typically, more than 30 percent of students choose to live off campus after their first year.
On the whole, students in that category perform worse in the classroom and are less involved in co-curricular activities than their on-campus sophomore counterparts are, according to Susan Mosley-Howard, associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students.

Miami’s soon-to-be-implemented two-year residential policy is part of an initiative to keep students engaged in ways that administrators hope first-year students are, through orientation, meetings and residence hall programming...SOURCE


31 January 2008

iGoogle

http://timesonline.typepad.com/snakes_and_ladders/2008/01/10-embarrassing.html

7 embarrassing breaches of workplace etiquette


I recently dropped my underpants while talking to a colleague. I wasn't wearing them at the time (I was dashing off to get changed into my running kit when I bumped into him) but there was still a moment of awkwardness, which naturally I filled by saying "oh look, my knickers are on the floor." I don't know what the correct etiquette is in such a situation, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't it.

This got me thinking about other breaches of workplace manners; not all of those listed below are mine, I swear...

1. Losing track of gossip. There's nothing worse than sharing a juicy piece of semi-anonymous scuttlebutt with a colleague only to get halfway through the story and realise that it's about them. "Did you hear about that bloke who has been sleeping in the stationery supply room on level three for the past week because his wife kicked him out? Oh, right. Yes. I suppose you have."

2. Inaccurate blamestorming. Righteous anger has its place but shouldn't be let loose indiscriminately. It's hard to come back from "I've never seen such incompetence"...particularly if it transpires that it's your own.

3. Referring to a colleague by his nickname and only later remembering that, until you spoke to him, he didn't actually realise that people referred to him as Stalin.

4. Leaving the lavatory in an unpleasant state. I don't know why people do this, but I hope that one day they step out of their stinky cubicle to discover that their manager is next in the queue. Maybe then they'll step back in and flush properly.

5. Mentioning a colleague's hangover/faked sickie/history of cocaine abuse in front of the boss. You think that you're being matey and fun. Your colleague thinks that you're trying to get her sacked.

6. Hitting reply to all. By now there have been so many warnings about why not to hit this button that, if you do tell everyone in your company exactly what you think of your chief executive's dress sense, people are likely to think it's a deliberate ploy rather than a fit of idiocy.

7. Sending out a recall three days after the dodgy reply to all. If you've left it that long it's really too late. All you're doing is reminding people of your initial faux pas...SOURCE

landscape urbanism bullshit generator

http://www.ruderal.com/bullshit/bullshit.htm

LANDSCAPE URBANISM
BULLSHIT GENERATOR (beta)


Instructions:
1. Don't fill in the box.
2. Simply click the "make bullshit" button.
3. Watch bullshit appear in the box.
4. Repeat to taste (use your Enter/Return key).

base script by leslie lee .
thanks Rob
with apologies to dack.com and the NASDAQ at 51000...SOURCE





Younghee Jung »oasis in the city: love hotels

http://younghee.com/2008/01/24/oasis-in-the-city-love-hotel/

LOVE HOTELS
by Younghee Jung

I haven’t found a reliable explanation where the name “love hotel” came from, but it is undeniable that love hotels have strong connotations of sexual activities. My first experience with a love hotel was in Korea when we had to set up our temporary fieldwork office space in one because of its proximity to the university campus that our local research assistants were from. One of our local research assistants refused to come up to our ‘temporary office’ because she did not want to be shown to enter the hotel with her male classmate.

Seeking privacy – including the need, or desire for having sex – topped up with affordable convenience may be the main reason why people use love hotels, because:
- they have no personal space at home, often because of pure lack of space or cohabitation
- they live with parents which makes it morally unacceptable to bring a partner home without a serious commitment to the relationship
- they are having an affair in secrecy
- they want/can, at the spur of the moment
- they need to kill time till the first train runs. For many Japanese, taxi is too expensive as an option for returning home at night...SOURCE

Bare life?

http://www.spaceandculture.org/2008/01/31/bare-life/

Bare life?
Lebbeus Woods, SLUMS:

The problem (via Subtopia)

People with steady jobs and incomes, who are assured of having enough money to go to school, to the doctor or clinic;
who can save some money, buy enough food and clothing to last a while; who can plan for the future; all too often coast
along without thinking very much or having to fall back on their resourcefulness.
But there is no coasting for the slum dweller. Everything is now, today, and each day is a new struggle for survival.
The gains made yesterday were maybe enough, but they were consumed yesterday. Nothing carries over, except the needs.
Slum dwellers share something with people caught in a war zone, where the infrastructure of society has been interrupted or destroyed.
They have to scrounge and improvise, just to have the basics pf shelter, food, heat.
To survive, they have to be inventive. But the people in the war zone can look forward to the end of war, the restoration of society and its services.
The slum dwellers have no such prospect. For them the war, its brutalities and atmosphere of cruelty and indifference to human life, never ends...SOURCE

30 January 2008

Australia to Apologize to Aborigines for Past Mistreatment

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3ap5am

Australia to Apologize to Aborigines for Past Mistreatment

By TIM JOHNSTON
- New York Times
Published: January 31, 2008
SYDNEY, Australia — The new government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says it will apologize for past mistreatment
of Australia’s Aboriginal minority when Parliament convenes next month, addressing an issue that has
blighted race relations in the country for years...SOURCE

2008's Ten Worst Places to be Black-blackagendareport.com -

http://preview.tinyurl.com/36s6bl
2008's Ten Worst Places to be Black
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

“Painting an accurate picture is not difficult.  Useful measures of family income and cohesiveness, of home ownership, life expectancy, education levels, of unemployment and underemployment abound.  But among all the relevant data on the state of black America today one factor stands out: the growth of America’s public policy of racially selective policing, prosecution, and mass imprisonment of its black citizens over the past 30 years. 
The operation of the crime control industry has left a distinctive, multidimensional and devastating mark on the lives of millions of black families and on the economic and social fabric of the communities in which they live.”...SOURCE

No Child' Law Picked Apart as Renewal Fight LoomsNPR:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3apm4b
NPR-Radio
EDUCATION
'No Child' Law Picked Apart as Renewal Fight Looms
by Claudio Sanchez

President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law in 2002. The federal plan to improve public schools passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Six years later, the law has to be renewed, and now it's drawing overwhelming bipartisan opposition. Critics are picking it apart, and many of the presidential candidates want to scrap it...SOURCE

Education Week: Teachers Advised to ‘Get Real’ on Race

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/01/30/21race.h27.html

Published Online: January 29, 2008
Published in Print: January 30, 2008

Teachers Advised to 'Get Real' on Race
By Debra Viadero

Everyone at Columbus High, the pseudonymously named school where researcher Mica Pollock taught in the 1990s, worried about the "hall wanderers"—students who roved the building, seemingly unimpeded, while their peers sat in class.
Yet, although a disproportionate number of the wanderers were African-American, educators at the highly diverse high school shied away from raising the race flag when the hallway problem came up in faculty meetings. The issue was left to fester.
That pattern of response—or nonresponse—is what Ms. Pollock came to describe in an award-winning 2004 book as "colormuteness." In other words, teachers saw a problematic racial pattern but, in an effort to appear colorblind, refused to talk about it in public...MORE

29 January 2008

Plan to Close Prisons Stirs Anxiety in Rural Towns - New York Times

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yw5229

Plan to Close Prisons Stirs Anxiety in Rural Towns
As rural economies across the country crumbled in the 1980s and the population of prison inmates swelled, largely because of tougher drug laws, states pushed prison construction as an economic escape route of sorts. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, an average of four prisons were built each year in rural America; the rate quadrupled in the 1980s and reached 24 a year in the 1990s, according to the federal Agriculture Department’s economic research service.

The boom, experts say, provided employment, but it also fostered a cycle of dependency. Depressed rural communities came to rely on the prisons as a source of jobs, economic sustenance and services, with little effort devoted to attracting other viable businesses...MORE

Millions of Young People Have Used Non-Prescription Cough and Cold Medicines to Get High - RTI International

http://www.rti.org/page.cfm?nav=493&objectid=141C80EF-8280-4B9A-A5D56F60E8AD0B23&rss=yes

Millions of Young People Have Used Non-Prescription Cough and Cold Medicines to Get High

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- About 3.1 million people between 12 and 25 years of age reported using over-the-counter (nonprescription) cough and cold medicines to get high at least once in their lifetimes, according to a report prepared by researchers at RTI International and staff in the Office of Applied Studies at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Newly analyzed data from the agency's 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health show the number is comparable to those who say they have used LSD, and is significantly greater than the number who reported having tried methamphetamines...MORE

In More Cases, Combat Trauma Is Taking the Stand - New York Times

http://preview.tinyurl.com/23absl

In More Cases, Combat Trauma Is Taking the Stand
By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: January 27, 2008

When combat veterans like Mr. Gregg stand accused of killings and other offenses on their return from Iraq and Afghanistan, prosecutors, judges and juries are increasingly prodded to assess the role of combat trauma in their crimes and whether they deserve special treatment because of it.

That idea has met with considerable resistance from prosecutors and judges leery of creating any class of offenders with distinct privileges. In Mr. Gregg’s case, for instance, Judge Kornmann cautioned the jury that nobody got “a free pass to shoot somebody” because they “went to Iraq or Afghanistan or the moon.”...MORE

Education Week: Coalition Calls for Opening Access to Publicly Funded School Materials

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/01/30/21brief-1.h27.html

Published Online: January 29, 2008
Published in Print: January 30, 2008

NEWS IN BRIEF
Coalition Calls for Opening Access to Publicly Funded School Materials

A coalition of educators, colleges, and foundations is urging governments and publishers to make publicly funded educational materials available online for free, according to a declaration released by the group last week...MORE

28 January 2008

The NonProfit Times - The Leading Business Publication For Nonprofit Management

http://nptimes.com/08Jan/news-080128-1.html

January 28, 2008

Expenses Continue To Put Stress On Nonprofit Budgets
By Mark Hrywna

Nonprofits were hit with increases in expenses last year that were two and three times the rate of inflation,
driven by a hike in the federal minimum wage and the ever increasing cost to raise a dollar.

The cost of raising money -- usually through capital campaigns -- contributed to rising expenses as
charities look to develop new, alternative revenue streams in the coming years.
The federal rate of inflation was more than 4.1 percent last year and about 3.25 percent in 2006.

The 14-percent hike in the federal minimum wage that went into effect in July automatically
raised labor costs for nonprofits, especially those involved in retail operations, where employees
usually earn at or around the minimum wage...MORE

Holocaust Remembrence Day at the UN

http://www.undispatch.com/archives/2008/01/holocaust_remem.php

January 28, 2008
Holocaust Remembrence Day at the UN
The UN marked Holocaust remembrance day yesterday.

As the global community today marked the third International Day in Memory of the Victims
of the Holocaust, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the occasion should
serve to honour the victims and educate future generations...MORE

Inside Higher Ed :: Combining First-Year Engagement and Civic Engagement

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/28/engage

JAN. 28
Combining First-Year Engagement and Civic Engagement

For experts on the undergraduate curriculum and student life, two areas of focus in recent years have
been the first-year experience and civic engagement.
While frequently talked about in separate conversations, speakers at the annual meeting of the
Association of American Colleges and Universities Saturday said that combining these two efforts made them both more successful.
And by successful, they stressed that they weren’t just talking about economies of scale, but mission.
Martha LaBare, associate professor of English at Bloomfield College, in New Jersey, said that it is too easy for
freshman programs to turn into “watching the bottom line” by focusing just on keeping the
bodies enrolled (and presumably paying tuition). T
he civic engagement piece makes these programs about more than retention — but about learning, too, she said...MORE

27 January 2008

Gmail - Public Agenda Alert - Stimulating Discussions - jimuleda@gmail.com

Behind the Headlines: Stimulating Discussions
http://www.publicagenda.org/headlines/headlines_blog.cfm

The White House and Congressional leaders reached
agreement today on an economic stimulus package that
will offer taxpayer rebates of between $600 and $1,200.
The rebates should total $100 billion and be sent
out by June. The plan also includes $50 billion in
business tax breaks but does not extend unemployment
benefits.

This proposal has been moving quickly, and there hasn't
been time for any new public opinion data to come out
on the stimulus package. But there's no question that
public opinion on the economy has become much more
negative. The most recent data we're aware of shows
seven in 10 rating economic  conditions as as "only fair"
or "poor." That's a 20-point increase in the past year
(from 48 percent in a January 2007 Gallup poll to 68
percent earlier this month). There's a corresponding
24-point increase in those who say the economy is
getting worse rather than better (up to 77 percent in
the Gallup poll taken three weeks ago).

That shift has also been reflected in public attitudes
about the presidential campaign. In September, the
ABC/Washington Post poll found 11 percent who said the
economy was the most important issue for them in the
campaign, compared to 35 percent for Iraq. By this month,
the economy had increased to 29 percent, compared to
20 percent for Iraq.
Find out more Behind the Headlines:
http://www.publicagenda.org/headlines/headlines_blog.cfm

Ghettoized Poli Sci Textbooks :: Inside Higher Ed

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/25/textbooks
For many college students, an introductory survey course may be their only exposure to a discipline — and in many courses, a textbook may serve as the guide. With that in mind, a committee of political scientists set out to see how how black people are portrayed in the introductory textbooks used in their discipline — and the results left them concerned.

The textbooks reviewed do feature discussion of black people and issues that affected them, but the most in-depth coverage is typically in a chapter on the civil rights movement, or sometimes civil liberties generally, found a study by the American Political Science Association’s Standing Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession. The study appears in the new issue of PS: Political Science & Politics.

The committee reviewed 27 textbooks used in intro courses, and published or in circulation (in many cases as updated editions of previously issued versions) from 2004 to 2007. Of those texts, 74 percent had a chapter on civil rights, 19 percent combine civil rights and civil liberties, and 7 percent had no specific chapter. For those books with a civil rights chapter, the average number of pages with references to black issues outside of that chapter is 13 — not a large number on books that averaged 569 pages...MORE

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