Work-Watch-Spend Treadmill

I guess I'll stop spending right after I use all of those cute plastic gift cards from yesterday...

Checkout this little "teaser" on how American consumerism works.




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Merry Christmas

Today is the day that I celebrate the birth of my savior, Jesus Christ. I know that there is a lot of Christian backlash and hatred in America; however, secularist continue to latch onto our most sacred holiday. That I will never understand.

Some days I wonder if the face of Christmas will change. Will true Christians stand up and make a conscious decision to observe Christmas on Jesus' actual birthday? Will we finally move away from the secular traditions of the tree, Santa Clause, Rudolph, and other things that lack true symbolism.

It bothers me that people who cannon even acknowledge Christ hold this holiday so dear to their hearts. How can one value something that they cannot truly understand nor respect? Christmas is more than a mere feel good holiday; but that is the prevailing attitude as it has become enlightened and trendy to live as a "non-believer."

Although I cannot understand the concept of "Secular Christmas," I have stumbled upon a blog post from the folks at Queerty, that allows me to respect a point of view that is quite secular, thus completely different from my own. Please enjoy!

We all remember when Christmas ruled the holiday roost – it’s a subject that comes up every year now, as reliable as Black Friday. “Christmas” salutations dominated the seasonal vernacular until equality-minded people called the linguistic saturation “alienating”. “Not everyone wants to have a Merry Christmas,” they said.

While that’s technically true, these arguments always struck me as excessive: perhaps a spawn of the frivolous 90s. It’s political correctness taken to misguided, hyperbolic heights.

I learned almost everything about “Christmas” from my Jewish father. No, he didn’t sit me down and tell me about Mary and the Three Wise Men – popular culture taught me all that business – but he did revel in the festival of Christian light. God, did he love it! One particular Christmas sticks out: the year he bought a 15-foot Christmas tree. Dr. Barry Belonsky was not a man of moderation, to say the least.

That Christmas morning my father bounced around the living room snapping shots of my sister and I opening our gifts. I can’t exactly remember what I received that year, probably something superhero related, but I recall being struck by my father’s enthusiasm. And it confused me.

Of course I loved Christmas – what kid doesn’t? But I couldn’t understand how this Jew from South Africa could be so keen on a foreign holiday. It wasn’t until much later in life, after I had [mostly] outgrown superheroes, that I understood my late father’s enthusiasm. Whether my reasons and his are the same, I’ll never know.

Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ – an obvious statement, yes, but one that’s central to my appreciation for the holiday. While I may not recognize him as my lord and savior, it’s important, I think, to reflect on this man’s life. For better or for worse, this admirable, generous man’s legacy has shaped history. His charitable ways have inspired billions of people. Christ’s image brings hope to the seemingly hopeless. It would be culturally irresponsible and selfish not to appreciate such an influential figure. That’s the first reason I’m affected by this festive commemoration. The second reason aims less for the head and more for the – gulp – heart.

That 15-foot Christmas remains lodged in my memory for more than just the hard wood. That’s the last time I remember my family being together for a holiday. Well, my family in that childish context. Two of the key figures from that year – my grandfather and my father – have since died. Two more, meanwhile, have joined the Belonsky fun: my niece and nephew. It’s a pretty good trade, if you ask me. And, no, I don’t think my father – nor my grandfather – would balk at my seemingly flippant mortal barter.

My father loved Christmas because he enjoyed being with his family, a rarity for a workaholic doctor. That’s something many of us neglect to do: appreciate those we call “family”. As we all know or will learn, blood doesn’t constitute family. It’s a fragile yet necessary collective comprised of the people from from which we learn something, the people with which we laugh, cry and scream; the people with whom we are, well, familiar.

Seen in this light, Christmas becomes nothing more than a day during which we can all relax with the people we love most. “Have a Merry Christmas” becomes a reminder: a plea to enjoy the people you love, because you never know when they’ll be gone.

So, on that note, “Merry Christmas” to all and, yes, a to all a good night.

Cutest thing in America today

Former U.S. Rep. McKinney enters presidential race as Green

Former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is running for president as a member of the Green Party, which she says shares her views on ending the Iraq war, protecting the environment and other issues.


McKinney, who served five terms in Congress before losing her seat to a fellow Democrat last year, declared her candidacy in a video posted late Sunday on the Web site of a group that had been drafting her to run.


"The Democrats are no different than their Republican counterparts, eat out of the hands of corrupt lobbyists and feed at the same corporate trough. I am proud to say that the Green Party is my new political home," McKinney said in the taped announcement.


McKinney's names will appear on ballots in California, Illinois, Arkansas and several other states holding presidential primaries on Feb. 5, according to www.runcynthiarun.org.


The site does not contain further information about her campaign schedule, and an e-mail sent to the site's operators did not receive a response.


McKinney, who moved to Northern California this year and registered to vote as a Green, is one of seven presidential candidates running under the Green Party banner, according to the party.


Among them are Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who was the party's nominee in 1996 and 2000, hip-hop scholar Jared Ball, Kent Mesplay, former president of the environmental organization Turtle Island Institute and Elaine Brown, a former leader of the Black Panther Party.


The Green Party of the United States is scheduled to hold its nominating convention in July in Chicago.


"The Republicans have deceived us, the Democrats have failed us. But we cannot deceive ourselves and we must not fail in our struggle for peace because the world still looks to America for leadership," McKinney said in her taped message. "Now, we must be those leaders." [sfg]

Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy raises legal questions

The announced pregnancy of Jamie Lynn Spears -- the 16-year-old children's television star and younger sister of beleaguered pop star Britney Spears -- is casting new light on how states deal with the thorny issue of consensual sex among teens.

Spears, the star of Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101," told OK! Magazine that she's pregnant and that the father is her 18-year-old boyfriend.
There has been no public talk of criminal prosecution in the case. Consensual sex between the two may well have been legal, depending on where and when it took place.

But critics of the nation's statutory rape laws say that laws that are ignored in some cases can be used to put other teens in prison and land them on sex-offender registries.

"You have a disturbing disparity in how these laws are enforced," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. "I have no problem at all with nailing adults who sleep with children, but I have a problem with the prosecution of teenagers in consensual relationships.

"What this case should focus the nation on is having a more evenhanded approach to these cases." [CNN] continue reading

A White Christmas Indeed!

So, the wife decides to buy some classic Christmas-related movies for the children and the issue of the song White Christmas comes up. I tell the wife to pick up a copy of White Christmas starringBing Crosby and Danny Kaye for both the song White Christmas and a fun scene on a train when Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney sing the song Snow. The wife gets to Best Buy, forgets what movie and asks the salesman for the movie where Bing sings White Christmas. Said dude gives wife a copy of Holiday Inn (where Bing also sings White Christmas). Easy mistake, no harm no foul, right?

EXCEPT, I’ve only seen Holiday Inn in re-runs on commercial TV, which means a substantial bit has been cut out. Specifically, a substantial part was cut out of Bing Crosby in Blackface. Imagine my surprise when I step away from a light holiday moview to get a drink for my 3 year old, only to come back to Louise Beavers and pickaninnies singing about Lincoln freeing the slaves. WTF? Where’d that come from?

Turns out that with the notable exception of Turner Classic Movies, which keeps the scene in for historic purposes, most people who have seen that movie only on television have no idea whatsoever that the blackface scene exists. It was edited out years ago. Aside from the the crows in Dumbo, it stands out as one of the most offensive scenes I’ve seen in movies. It took a good minute to even register what I was seeing and cut the thing off.

Not like I was a big Bing fan before. He always seem to have something dark hidden under the more visible boring. He was really only tolerable in films paired with actors with better personalities - Astaire, Kaye, Hope, Sinatra, even David Bowie in that Christmas special. But you know, couldn’t that box have come with a Warning: Explicit Cooning label or something? Gee Bing, thanks for the Christmas surprise. Bamboozled again. Punk. [EbonyJet]

Girl 7 Shot 6 Times Saving Mother

DETROIT -- A 7-year-old-girl is being hailed as an "angel from heaven" and a hero for jumping in front of an enraged gunman, who pumped six bullets into the child as she used her body as a shield to save her mother's life.

Alexis Goggins, a first-grader at Campbell Elementary School, is in stable condition at Children's Hospital in Detroit recovering from gunshot wounds to the eye, left temple, chin, cheek, chest and right arm.

"She is an angel from heaven," said Aisha Ford, a family friend for 15 years who also was caught up in the evening of terror.

The girl's mother, Selietha Parker, 30, was shot in the left side of her head and her bicep by a former boyfriend, who police said was trying to kill Parker. The gunman was disarmed by police and arrested at the scene of the shooting, a

Detroit gas station. Police identified him as Calvin Tillie, 29, a four-time convicted felon whom Parker had dated for six months.

Parker, who was treated and released at Detroit Receiving Hospital, is now at her daughter's bedside. She declined to comment Tuesday. [Detroit News] continue reading

Quotable

“If there’s more than one black person in the movie, it’s an urban romantic comedy, an urban thriller - it’s just a flipping movie. The way kids think, the demographic they pander and chase - they don’t care."-Gabrielle Union

Soulja Boy an Influencer?

Personally, "Crank That" has never done anything for me. I cannot understand a word that is coming out of Soulja Boy's mouth. It did however sound like he was saying "Yule." I always jokingly say, "Yule, like 'yuletide?'" Corny, yes.

Out of all of the versions of "Crank That" out there (this weekend I was informed that there is a multitude), the Christmas "Crank that Santa Clause" seems the most fitting. So please, enjoy this gross celebration of stupidity! YULE!



PS. Have you ever wondered what "Superman that hoe" means?

Barack Obama’s right hands

Attitude is everything. I truly believe you can get through almost any challenge in life with a positive attitude and a good laugh.” —Eureka Gilkey, 32, with Alyssa Mastromonaco, 31
What Alyssa Mastromonaco does: Where will Barack and Michelle Obama be at any given moment and how will they get there? Ask Mastromonaco, director of scheduling and advance. “I try to make sure their time is used as efficiently and effectively as possible.” She tries to schedule the candidate so that he travels from east to west, picking up an hour or two as he goes. “I am at my desk almost all the time. A map with pins is behind me,” marking where the Obamas have been.
Her biggest goof: “I [arranged for] a private plane to pick him up and I signed the contract for the wrong day. I got hysterical. My phone rang and it’s Barack and I think he’s going to yell at me. He said he’s on a United flight, and he’ll make it to the event on time. He’s like, it’s no big deal. If you’re not working for someone who you think is a great human being, it’s not worth doing.”
What Eureka Gilkey does: There are 500-plus chapters of Students for Barack Obama, just one of the grassroots groups that the national deputy political director oversees. She spends “hours and hours on the phone” lining up supporters. “If we weren’t human, we could stay in our chairs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Why Obama’s her guy: “He’s very upfront about his Christian faith. He’s very much a family man, and I think he’s a great role model…especially when it comes to being a responsible father. I think that come January 2009, if he’s elected, the future of children of color in this country will change, the thought process will change about what they can be and what opportunities they can have. That’s a powerful message that we send not only to our children but to the world.”
She’s never without:“A red leather-bound Bible; inside is my late grandfather’s handkerchief. It’s always in my purse.” [Glamour]

Revealed: scientist who sparked racism row has black genes

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist who provoked a public outcry by claiming black Africans were less intelligent than whites has a DNA profile with up to 16 times more genes of black origin than the average white European.
An analysis of the genome of James Watson showed that 16 per cent of his genes were likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than 1 per cent.
"This level is what you would expect in someone who had a great-grandparent who was African," said Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics, whose company carried out the analysis. "It was very surprising to get this result for Jim."
The findings were made available after Dr Watson became only the second person to publish his fully sequenced genome online earlier this year.

Dr. Watson was forced to resign his post as head of a research laboratory in New York shortly after triggering an international furore by questioning the comparative intelligence of Africans. In an interview during his recent British book tour, the American scientist said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospects for Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really".
The Science Museum in London cancelled a lecture by him, while the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, branded his comments "racist propaganda".

Other scientists working in the field of molecular biology quickly distanced themselves from the comments, saying that it was not possible to draw such conclusions from the work that had been done on DNA.

The study of the DNA of Dr Watson – who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine – adds another twist to the controversy surrounding the American scientist's comments.

In addition to the 16 per cent of his genes which were identified as likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent, a further 9 per cent were likely to have come from an ancestor of Asian descent, the test indicated. [Indpendent]

Missing Ohio Pregnant Attorney Found Alive

Her husband told police she didn't pick up their son Wednesday. He tried to call her cell phone, but it was turned off, police said.

Georgia authorities were interviewing Hancock Saturday. Toledo police were making arrangements to travel to Georgia and escort her back to Ohio.

News that Hancock had been found unharmed was met with relief by friends and family.

Hancock's mother, Tempie McConnell, said her daughter sounded "very shaken, very nervous" when the two talked briefly on Saturday.
"My little grandson was just very excited that his mom's coming home," Tempie McConnell said.

Hancock's husband, Lawrence Hancock, who is bishop of Final Harvest Church in Toledo, Ohio, said that when he spoke to his wife Saturday they did not talk about what happened during her disappearance.

Mrs. Hancock is a former city councilwoman in Toledo. [ABC]

Man charged in Nailah Franklin's death

A man who briefly dated Nailah Franklin is now charged with the young Chicago woman's death. She was 28 years old when she was killed in September. Her nude body found in a wooded area. Police say cell phone activity conflicted with the alibi of the suspect, Reginald Potts Junior.

Nailah Franklin's family says, while this arrest won't bring her back, it is one more step along the road to recovery. Her's is a story that captured the city's attention. And Reginald Potts, the man now charged with Franklin's murder, is no stranger to law enforcement.

Over eight days, her family prayed, a community searched, but police now say Nailah Franklin was already dead. They believe Potts abducted and immediately murdered the pharmaceutical sales rep who he had briefly dated.

"I know everything done in the dark comes to the light, so I don't worry about that, I know justice will be served," said Ashley Franklin, Nailah's sister.
Police have always viewed Reginald Potts as a suspect. Shortly before she disappeared, Franklin told friends he had made threatening phone calls to her. She was in the process of getting a restraining order against him. [ABC] continue reading

Pregnant Toledo Attorney Goes Missing

The search for a missing Ohio attorney who is six months pregnant is intensifying.

Karyn McConnell-Hancock, a 35-year-old former member of the Toledo City Council, was reported missing by her husband Wednesday after she failed to pick up their son at day care

She was last seen leaving her downtown Toledo, Ohio, law office around 9 a.m. Wednesday for a case at the juvenile detention center, according to the Toledo Police Department report.

In the report, obtained by ABC News' Toledo affiliate WTVG, Lawrence Hancock told police that he repeatedly tried to reach his wife, but her cell phone was shut off. Hancock checked her law office and neither his wife nor her car, a 2005 Chrysler 300, were there.

Hancock also told police that his wife has a client who has recently been aggressive toward her, according to the report. McConnell-Hancock reportedly had been getting suspicious phone calls.

Police are saying very little publicly about the missing person's case and have not yet said they suspect foul play. [ABC] continue reading

Older white women join Kenya's sex tourists

Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64.
They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls."

Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.

Allie and Bethan -- who both declined to give their full names -- said they planned to spend a whole month touring Kenya's palm-fringed beaches. They would do well to avoid the country's tourism officials.

"It's not evil," said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, when asked about the practice of older rich women traveling for sex with young Kenyan men."But it's certainly something we frown upon."

Also, the health risks are stark in a country with an AIDS prevalence of 6.9 percent. Although condom use can only be guessed at, Julia Davidson, an academic at Nottingham University who writes on sex tourism, said that in the course of her research she had met women who shunned condoms -- finding them too "businesslike" for their exotic fantasies. [MSNBC] continue reading

The Choke Factor

Every sports fan has vivid memories of key occasions on which a favorite team or player has 'choked' under pressure. And every student who has ever taken a standardized test knows what that kind of pressure feels like. What makes for high-pressure situations, and how do they influence performance? In the last decade such issues have been explored by social psychologists researching the phenomenon of stereotype threat. Their work shows not only that pressure can compromise performance, but that this dynamic is more common among members of negatively stereotyped social groups. Why?

The classic demonstration of stereotype threat, in a 1995 paper by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, emerged from a series of studies in which high-achieving African American students at Stanford completed the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) under conditions where they thought either that the test was measuring intelligence or that it was not a test of ability at all. Intriguingly, these bright students did much worse when they considered it an intelligence test.. This, the researchers argued, was because "in situations where [a negative] stereotype is applicable, one is at risk of confirming it as a self-characterization, both to one's self and to others who know the stereotype." This tendency to perform worse when conscious of being in a group stereotyped as performing poorly is what is meant by stereotype threat.

This pattern of findings has been replicated with many different groups on many different dimensions of stereotype content. The work of the University of Chicago's Sian Beilock and colleagues, reported in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology (abstract or pdf download), follows that of many previous researchers in showing that if female students are made aware of a stereotype that men have greater mathematical ability than women, they tend to do worse on complex mathematical tasks than they do if they are not alerted to this stereotype. [SciAm] continue reading

East Texas Man Protesting Handshaking

In the old days, warriors would shake hands to prove they were unarmed. Now, hand-shaking is just a friendly greeting. But one East Texas man says "no more." He's protesting handshakes.

Thursday morning, he stood outside the Smith County Courthouse with sign in hand to spread his message. And he says he's doing it all for you. Wolf Ray paces back and forth in front of the Smith County courthouse asking people what they think about his sign. "You think it's a great idea? Yeah I don't know how much it will happen," says one person Wolf approaches.

His sign urges people to "stop shaking hands." "We can make ourselves sick even bring on death from shaking hands," he explains.

Wolf says the physical greeting spreads diseases like the flu and staph and that's want he wants to stop. "I'm saying if a person came up and he sneezed and coughed in his hand and he reached out to me, I would say 'no, I wouldn't do this'...I would either go here or here," he demonstrates while touching knuckles and bumping elbows.
"I think it's a good idea, we have to be more and more cautious, there's germs floating around everywhere, this is the flu season no doubt," says passerby Dennis Dearion.

Med Team Dr. Ed Dominguez agrees Wolf's theory is logical but doesn't think it's all that practical. "I can't see doing that in a church for example but if that the way you're going to contact people, and everyone's into it that's fine, is it foolproof? I don't' think so, it hasn't shown to be foolproof," he explains.

The best bet against diseases, Dr. Ed says, wash your hands regularly. As for Wolf, there's no shaking his theory. He's hoping it will touch as many people as possible. [klvt]

Twenty Years Later: James Baldwin’s America Hasn’t Changed

Baldwin’s biographer and close friend, David Leeming, called his essays “prophetic,” as they articulated an eerily clear-eyed view of America’s peril at the hands of what, in Baldwin’s day, was politely called the “race problem.”
Perhaps Leeming has it right and Baldwin was a soothsayer. But a more plausible explanation is that Baldwin’s work remains contemporary because America’s racial caste system changed so little over the generations that his writing spans.

Baldwin considered race America’s poison pill. And he deftly portrayed Americans of all colors struggling to concoct their own individual antidotes—solutions that are temporary at best and always crazy-making because, at root, the problem is structural not individual.

Today, we still have not reached Baldwin’s understanding of race and racism. It remains a collective problem that we insist upon dealing with on an individual basis. As a result, even our greatest triumphs—the end of legal segregation, broadened opportunity for the slim black middle class—are undermined by broader forces.

In his first essay collection, 1955’s Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin describes an urban ghetto that since has changed only in aesthetic. “All over Harlem now,” he wrote, “there is felt the same bitter expectancy with which, in my childhood, we awaited winter: it is coming and it will be hard; there is nothing anyone can do about it.”

Then and now, reform efforts have failed to alter that bleak reality because they’ve made no fundamental changes. As Baldwin wrote, “Steps are taken to right the wrong, without, however, expanding or demolishing the ghetto. The idea is to make it less of a social liability, a process about as helpful as make-up to a leper.”

So today Baldwin’s Harlem still lingers atop the list of New York neighborhoods with problems ranging from dilapidated housing stock to communicable disease to food establishments that simply fail to pass health inspection. The same is true for other racially defined ghettos around the country.
What is different today is that few discuss race in Baldwin’s structural terms. Instead, we busy ourselves with word games.

We play gotcha with celebrities who use slurs, rather than noticing the morbid conditions African Americans are disproportionately asked to live within. We eagerly embrace commentators like Bill Cosby when they decry the way individuals have adapted to generations of ghetto life. But we nickel and dime any policy effort to change those conditions. We ban the N-word, and we leave the ghetto intact.

This neglect has the same impact today that it had when Baldwin dissected it in 1955. “All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand,” he wrote, “and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.” [RW]

They're sitting right next to us

At a recent meeting of the Boston University student organization Latinos Unidos, club president Stephanie Abregu wanted to tackle the issue of racism. She and the group's other officers kicked off the event by asking the two dozen guests - predominantly Latinos with a few blacks, whites, and Asians - a series of questions: Have you heard someone use a stereotype? Did you confront them about it? Did you respond with words or with violence?
more stories like this

Then they invited students to share their experiences. Toward the end of the event, Jaime Hermonsillo talked about an incident that happened months earlier, two weeks into his freshman year. He had been sitting with friends, chatting about the colleges to which they'd applied.
"One girl said to me, 'Well, let's face it, the only reason you're here is because we need the statistics,' " he says. Hermonsillo, who attended Lake Forest Academy, a predominantly white boarding school outside his hometown of Chicago, told her he'd worked as hard as she had to get into college.
"Then she was like, 'Well, ummm,' " recalls Hermonsillo, 18. "She didn't know what to say. She didn't even apologize or anything."

The subject of racial and ethnic tensions on college campuses has become so topical that a November episode of "Without a Trace" kicked off with a white student calling his black peer an affirmative-action "charity case" during class. Tufts University's conservative student newspaper, The Primary Source, generated controversy a year ago when it published a Christmas carol titled "O Come All Ye Black Folk." Asian students at Boston College complain of drunken alumni and students who shout racial epithets as part of their football game celebrations.

In recent months, nooses, a centuries-old symbol of racial intimidation, have been found at the University of Maryland, California State University at Fullerton, Purdue, and Columbia. "Crossing the Border" and "Ghetto" parties, in which white students wear blackface or crawl under barbed-wire fences to get in, generate outcry when images from these events turn up on Facebook. The blog Vox ex Machina offers a "College Racism Roundup" of incidents on campuses nationwide.

The tensions, says Daren Graves, an assistant professor of general education at Simmons College, mirror a nationwide movement opposed to political correctness that's occurring in response to the advances of the civil-rights movement. [Boston Globe] continue reading