Posted in economy, politics, technology, tagged abundant, advancements, alternative, balance, Big Oil, blame, brown energy, bullet train, buzzword, capital, clean, collaborative, collective, commodities, cooperative, crisis, debate, define, drilling, economy, efficient, environmentalists, food, food insecurity, fuel, future, geothermal, gouging, Green, highway, history, hovercraft, imagine, incentives, inflation, infrastructure, innovation, invention, Iran, jobs, market, myths, not in my backyard, oil, partisan, partnership, petro, petro hoarding, political, Popular Science, power, price hikes, prices, private, privatize, profit, progress, public, pump, railroad, renewable, renewable resources, resource, rhetoric, risk, role, scarcity, solution, space, speculation, subsidy, surge, sustainable, tax break, technology, transportation, truth, values, venture capital, vision, water, wind, world, WPA on March 18, 2012 |
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Quick! What type of world did you imagine when you were a kid? Did you foresee yourself darting about in a hovercraft much like the cartoon family in the Jetsons? Vacationing on the moon? A lean, mean greener world? How is it that we find ourselves these many years, decades even, down the road and we’re still looking at a society that in so many ways is what it once was: the world that petroleum built? Decades after the Carter-era gasoline shortages, now with the prospect of $6 gasoline looming before us, we have little to show for our grand hopes and great visions. We’re still talking about moving off foreign oil even as the buzzword “energy independence” has become firmly entrenched in our lexicon. So little, so late.
What happened? (more…)
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Posted in health, politics, tagged air, alarms, Americans, awareness, Basel Convention Treaty, Bed bath and beyond, best interest, cancer, cancer foundations, catastrophe, CDC, cesium iodine, Chernobyl, China, china syndrome, chronic, cleanup, clearance levels, colbalt-60, conflicts of interest, consumer, consumer safety, contamination, cure, DDREF, dirty bomb, DOE, donations, dose, dosimeters, Dual Ridge, elements, energy, energy policy, experiment, export, exposure, FDA, food, Fukushima, goods, holder, homegoods, hot metal, hot spoons, human health, illegal, import, India, informed, ionizing, isotopes, Japan, Japanese, lab rats, LNT, low-level waste, manufactured, media, medical waste, meltdown, metal, nuclear, nuclear lobby, outlaw, Petkau effect, plutonium, politicians, power, precautionary principle, products, public debate, public health, radioactive, recycle, regulation, risk, safe, scrap, silent, status, Tatara Group, terrorism, Third World, threat, tissue box, toxic, treatment, unacceptable, unsafe, uranium, US, water, x-ray on January 13, 2012 |
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In the scare-of-the-week news story we learn that Bed, Bath & Beyond may have distributed radioactive tissue holders across the country.
It allegedly started when just four metal tissue box covers buried in a transport truck set off radiation detectors installed after 911 to protect us from a terrorist threat. Who knew truck-stop Geiger counters would also serve to protect us, apparently, from made-in India? But are mass exporters like China and India really to blame for these all-too-common consumer product scares?
Perhaps not.
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Posted in notes on the human condition, tagged abuse, academia, accuse, African, American, antidote, ascribe, assumption, assumptions, attitudes, attribute, authority, awareness, background, baiting, barrier, beliefs, belong, black, blame, breakdown, butterfly effect, Cambridge, character, characteristics, Chicago Tribune, circumstances, color, community, connection, consciousness, control, cooperate, creed, dangerous, determinations, detox, difference, door, economic, education, emotional intelligence, ethnicity, expectations, experience, fanning the flames, forget, forgiveness, free, generalizations, get to know, goading, harmful, Harvard, hate, Henry Louis Gates Jr., history, home, hostility, house, hurtful, ideas, identify, identity, individual, influence, interpretation, intruder, law enforcement, letting go, life, limiting, multiculturalism, names, negative, neighborhood, neighbors, next generation, officer, others, ourselves, outcome, outgroup, painful, past, perceived, perception, perceptual filter, perpetuate, person, personal power, plight, police, power, present, professor, profile, profiling, projection, promoting, racialization, racism, rationalize, reality, recognize, recollection, recovery, reinforce, relationships, research, school, self fulfilling prophecy, skew, skin color, society, stereotypes, studies, success, taking charge, teach, transference, transmit, treatment, university, values, vector, victim, victimhood, victimization, views, virus, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research on July 21, 2009 |
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Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. cried foul when a neighbor’s call to the police resulted in his arrest at the door to his own home, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Refusing, allegedly, to identify himself to a responding Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer didn’t help law enforcement appreciate that the director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research was the rightful owner of the home — a far cry from the intruder his neighbor feared.
Professor Gates Jr. may not have intended to bait the officer into arresting him, but that’s the effect his apparent refusal to cooperate had.
“Is this what it means to be a black man in America?”, the professor rhetorically opined.
If “what it means” refers to negative racial assumptions applied to oneself — ascribing to the color of one’s skin the power to draw negative and unfair treatment — then yes. But in very real way, who or what is proposing the racism — the past or the present? Someone else — or the professor himself?
Psychologists call the phenomena of blurring the lines between the motivations of self and others “transference“. It’s no secret that sometimes we project our own assumptions on others, in this case an officer caught between a nosey neighbor and a prejudicially-minded professor.
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