Republican Congressman Screams At Mother With Two Children, Tells Her To Join The Military Instead Of Using Pell Grants When a mother with two children and two jobs expressed her concern about Pell Grants, which she relies on to pay for college, during a town hall held by Republican Congressman Steve Womack in Arkansas last week, she probably didn’t expect his reaction. According to Blue Arkansas, Kelly Eubanks asked Womack about the Pell Grant program which she uses to attend college. Eubanks, who has to work two jobs to take care of her two children, was concerned about his vote to slash Pell Grants for 100,000 low income students. Of course this didn’t impress Eubanks in the slightest. It’s pretty sad when a congressman refuses to answer a question from a constituent.
The Hedonistic Imperative - Abstract This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world. Why does suffering exist? Contemporary images of opiate-addled junkies, and the lever-pressing frenzies of intra-cranially self-stimulating rats, are deceptive. Two hundred years ago, before the development of potent synthetic pain-killers or surgical anaesthetics, the notion that "physical" pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed no less bizarre.
America didn’t vote for a “grand bargain” - Salon.com - Waterfox By 10 p.m. on Tuesday, it was all over but the shouting — the shouting of Karl Rove, incredulous that Fox News’ “decision desk” would dare deploy the best statistical evidence at its disposal to call Ohio for the president; the shouting of wingnuts everywhere that — no fair! — Obama only won because of superstorm Sandy (because demonstrated competence in running the government is no reason to choose someone to … run your government); the shouting of the joyous throngs at McCormick Place waiting to receive their new second-term president. In my Hyde Park apartment just five blocks from the president’s home, soon all around me was jubilation. A second Barack Obama term! Fellow Democrats, let’s hope not. The goal, with or without a filibuster reform, would be to “correct” a supposed structural budget crisis that liberal economists like Paul Krugman and Dean Baker convincingly point out doesn’t actually exist. America’s government is not too big.
Milky Way Musings Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline “Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try - that’s my fate, too.” -11th-grade African American student, Berkeley, California This young man isn’t being cynical or melodramatic; he’s articulating a terrifying reality for many of the children and youth sitting in our classrooms—a reality that is often invisible or misunderstood. Some have seen the growing numbers of security guards and police in our schools as unfortunate but necessary responses to the behavior of children from poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods. We believe that this is the case, and there is ample evidence to support that claim. What Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline? The school-to-prison pipeline begins in deep social and economic inequalities, and has taken root in the historic shortcomings of schooling in this country. Children are being branded as criminals at ever-younger ages. Mass Incarceration: A Civil Rights Crisis Revising the Curriculum
DC vs. NYC - The Daily Beast - Waterfox Wally Pfister is nervous—and with good reason. In a few hours, Pfister, 52, will slip into his best suit and head from his house in the Hollywood Hills to Westwood’s Regency Village Theater for the red-carpet premiere of his new movie, Transcendence. For most filmmakers Pfister’s age, this would be a moment to bask in. But Pfister isn’t most filmmakers his age. “This is a very difficult period right now—being in limbo,” he admits. By almost any measure, Pfister is a remarkable success: a local news cameraman turned Oscar-winning cinematographer, he’s spent the last 14 years as Christopher Nolan’s go-to DP (director of photography). But Pfister was getting antsy, as usual. We’re sitting in Pfister’s rec room—his man cave, of sorts. Pfister looks exhausted too. Pfister offers me a glass of water. “Every 10 years I needed to make a radical change in what I was doing,” Pfister tells me. Do you remember first reading the Memento script? Memento was phenomenal. I knew that I wanted to do it.
Ukulele Resources Ukulele Resources Many people associate the ukulele with but did you know this mini guitar like instrument was actually brought to the by the Portuguese who came to work the sugar cane fields in 1879. The Portuguese call the ukulele ‘braguinha’. The Hawaiians were impressed by the speed of the musicians fingers as they moved across the finger board creating beautiful music and called the instrument a ukulele which translates as “jumping flea” because that is what the musicians fingers looked like when playing. If you want to bring home a ukulele from your trip to that you want to use as a real instrument and not just a decor item then AVOID the toy version sold for about $10-$35 that looks something like this: These are not made to be a real instrument, just a toy for a kid or to use for display, and they will not stay in tune for more than a few strums of the strings. OnlineFree Ukulele Cord Chart Soprano GCEA Soprano ADF#B Baritone DGBE OnlineFree Ukulele Tuners Soprano Ukulele Tuner
Confiscating Condoms? The Dumbfounding Ways Police Deal With Prostitution | Sex & Relationships January 13, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. It's not enough for some lawmakers that for the better part of a century, selling and buying sex has been illegal in every state of the union. These laws against prostitution don't simply increase penalties for buying or selling sex; they extend to creating criminal consequences for every aspect of sex workers' lives. Though it's now fashionable for some anti-prostitution activists and lawmakers to position these laws as being of aid to prostitutes, there is absolutely no moral or legal basis for arresting and jailing a person “for her own good.” Prostitution-Free Zones Across the United States, sex workers and people who have been profiled as sex workers report being followed and stopped by police under the pretense that anywhere a sex worker might go and anything a sex worker might do in public will lead to a criminal act.