Next Up at UVa

The story continues.  And it just gets weirder as UVa appoints former Deputy US AG Mark Filip to head up the investigation into the total fucked-up-edness of a party culture (this time centering around Phi Kappa Psi) bordering on straight-up Caligula.

From our "local" rag The Daily Progress:

Late in a day of unrest Thursday on Grounds, University of Virginia officials announced the appointment of former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip to lead a review of the school’s policy and procedures for dealing with sexual assaults.

A statement from Rector George Keith Martin released just after 8 p.m. broke a nearly daylong silence from university leaders, including President Teresa A. Sullivan, in the wake of allegations of a September 2012 gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi house at UVa.

An account of the attack detailed in a nearly 9,000-word story in Rolling Stone ignited a storm of scrutiny Wednesday.

Earlier in a day when hundreds of students rallied and vandals shattered windows and spray-painted messages of protest on the walls of the house on Madison Lane, Phi Kappa Psi voluntarily surrendered its fraternal agreement with UVa and suspended all chapter activities. Charlottesville police are investigating the rape allegations at Sullivan’s request.

In case you missed them - here's a coupla details I find interesting.

First, from the Daily Progress article:

The Governing Board of the Inter-Fraternity Council at UVa released a statement saying members were “horrified, disgusted, and viscerally saddened” by the story.

“That some fraternity men commit sexual assault is irreconcilable with everything we hope our community to be, and we are mortified that any fraternity member is responsible for perpetrating such a heinous crime,” they said in the statement.

BTW - a member of that Council was interviewed at length by Rolling Stone (weeks if not months before publication), so translation: "We are shocked - shocked - to find there's rape going on here!" 

Second, Mark Filip is a Phi Kappa Psi alum.  Let that one sink in for a bit.  I'm not saying there's no value in the guy being somebody who knows his way around a fraternity.  But when there's an obvious problem with foxes in the chicken coop, I hafta be just a little skeptical about hiring a coyote to look into it for me.

To be real clear here, I don't want anybody throwing shit at the Frat House or at the little Frat Rats living there.  

This kinda nonsense might feel OK at the time, but it just makes it easier for some people to rationalize sympathy for the perps:

That said, it's not gonna hurt my feelings one little bit if we find a way to put an end to the elitist entitlement legacy bullshit that persists in the continuation of anything so obviously toxic to a democracy as The Greek System is.

So, take whatever action against PKP necessary to facilitate its demise.  I'd like nothing better than to sue the fuck out of 'em, and then bulldoze the house.

Use the money from the lawsuit to build a brand new Women's Health and Crisis Intervention Center - right there in the heart of Frat-boy Fuck-around Central.

Require every Fraternity and Sorority to contribute half of their dues (and whatever other income they get) to the maintenance and support and perpetuation of the thing until time itself crumbles into the dust.

EvilleMike has spoken.  So let it be written.  So let it be done.

Listening

It's axiomatic that when you wanna figure out something that's complex and weird and difficult to understand, you need to get a buncha smart guys in a room, get 'em talking and then listen to what they say.

George Lakoff is one of those guys:

Liberals tend not to understand conservatives, and their confusion is showing. On the one hand liberals see conservatives in disarray and react with glee at the fragmentation: the Tea Party vs. Libertarians vs. Neocons vs. Wall Street. Eric Cantor, the Republican Majority Leader, brought down by a Tea Party unknown. John Boehner unable to control his majority in the House. Republican primary challenges everywhere.

On the other hand, liberals are scared stiff of the Koch brothers and other wealthy Republicans bankrolling Republican candidates at every level all over the country. They are scared of a Republican takeover. And they should be.

--and-- 

At the heart of conservatism is strict father morality, as we have seen. But strict father morality has complexities and natural variations. What liberals don’t see is that the diversity can give conservatism as a whole considerable strength.

Different versions of conservatisms are defined by particular domains of interest. Strict father morality applies to all the domains—individual liberty and self-interest, world power, business, and society. These domains of interest characterize libertarian, neocon, financial, and Tea Party conservatives.

A better understanding of the Proto-Fascist crap we're up against is the first step in staying ready to fight back.

One of the main problems "with the liberals" is the tendency to think that there can actually be an end to a political fight; that once the election is over, the question's been settled and they can go about their business and stop worrying about it.  

All the great "liberal stuff" - Civil Rights, anti-trust law, labor law, Social Security, banking regulations, Medicare, EPA, OSHA, etc etc etc - all the stuff that actually makes us great because it makes us try a little harder to live up to the promises we made to ourselves in The Declaration and the Preamble - all the amazing LIBRUL/PROGRESSIVE accomplishments over the last 40 or 60 or 80+ years is being pared back because "the conservatives" never stop fighting to get their The Daddy State cemented into place.  

It's never over.  There is no such thing as "Once And For All".  Get used to it and understand that either we get busy winning or we get busy losing.

Ain't Nothin' New

I guess some of the shit we complain about now is the same shit we've been complaining about for what's getting to be a very long time.

Here's some Herblock stuff from 40 or 50 (or more) years ago.

Lance The Boil

When it seems like the world's all fucked up, one thing we have to stop and consider seriously is that maybe the world's just all fucked up.

Eventually, ya gotta get all that putrefaction out. If you don't drain the abscess, it just gets worse.

The UVa rape thing:

...At that same moment, she says, she detected movement in the room – and felt someone bump into her. Jackie began to scream.

"Shut up," she heard a man's voice say as a body barreled into her, tripping her backward and sending them both crashing through a low glass table. There was a heavy person on top of her, spreading open her thighs, and another person kneeling on her hair, hands pinning down her arms, sharp shards digging into her back, and excited male voices rising all around her. When yet another hand clamped over her mouth, Jackie bit it, and the hand became a fist that punched her in the face. The men surrounding her began to laugh. For a hopeful moment Jackie wondered if this wasn't some collegiate prank. Perhaps at any second someone would flick on the lights and they'd return to the party.

"Grab its motherfucking leg," she heard a voice say. And that's when Jackie knew she was going to be raped.

The Bill Cosby rape thing:

If Shonda Rhimes had a show called How to Get Away With Rape, it would only need one episode, and it would be a short one.

The hot-shot lawyer main character would give her client this advice: be a respected figure in your own community and target victims with lower status than your own. If you follow those rules, people will be uncomfortable with the consequences of believing your victims. They will not want to do that work. In fact, they will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid it.

Show over; roll credits.

On Tuesday, Janice Dickinson became the 15th woman to accuse Bill Cosby of raping, drugging, or sexually assaulting her, and the fifth to do so publicly. These women tell a similar story: that they met Cosby when they were young women. That he spent time with them under the guise of professional mentorship. And that he, at some point, drugged their drinks and assaulted them while they were incapacitated.

First:

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." --Edmund Burke

And then:
"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of the pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering. . . . In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail" --Judith Herman, 1997, Trauma and Recovery (pg 7-8)

Today's Yeah But

Jim Webb seems like such a straight-shooter-no-nonsense kinda guy, it's a little difficult for me to buy in.  And since being honest is such a complete political liability, I just don't give him much of a chance - 'course, nobody tho't he could beat George (Macaca) Allen either.

But here he is anyway:



It starts out with pretty much the usual zero-content platitudes about "good leadership" and "solving problems", but the thing gets a lot more specific than most intro speeches I've heard.  

And so, here we go again - Hillary's the default Democrat again, and so I gotta look at alternatives again.  Yeah, but - the Repubs are still fingers-in-the-mouth-jumpin'-up-and-down-crazy, and they're likely gonna nominate somebody who lets 'em think they could pass for normal by making Ronnie Raygun look like Eugene Debs.

Full text and some discussion at Blue Virginia.

No more Clintons

No more Bushes

No more Rockefellers

No more Kennedys

No more legacies

No more dynasties

There Are No Nations

It's worth seeing just about anything Paddy Chayevsky wrote because of the speeches and/or soliloquies.

The clip is from Network (1976), and it's been a favorite for me for a very long time.

"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies.  The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business - the world is a business, Mr Beale.  It has been since man crawled out of the slime..."



I like to say I'm a Capitalist because god is a Capitalist, and that I believe strongly in Regulation because god believes strongly in Regulation.

I think Capitalism is the closest analogy to the way the biosphere has evolved to operate.  

As an organism, I have to take in enough calories to build up something of a surplus, so I'll have the energy necessary to make the effort it'll take to go out and get my next meal - income vs outflow; profit and loss etc.

But I also have onboard mechanisms that're there to regulate the functioning of my system.   Blood sugar (eg) is a good thing, but my pancreas is there to regulate it so I get the benefits without it reaching levels that're harmful to me. Bunches of other mechanisms of regulation are built into my system as well.  I have a hypothalamus to help regulate my body temperature; my brain stem does all kinds of nifty things like regulate my heart rate and my breathing and my eye-blinks etc etc etc.  Regulation is what works to keep me in healthy balance with myself and the world around me.

So, to be a little clearer, I don't have a problem with Capitalism.  I only have a problem with Capitalism when it's allowed to go crashing thru people's lives as it speeds toward the Logical Extreme (aka Unfettered Free-Market Capitalism) - which is where we get Feudalism and Slavery and Conquest and Authoritarian Rule and all of the really shitty ways of running things that America's supposed to be the exception to.

Always always always remember - a business is not a democracy.

A Sensible Position Statement

Finally - a Dem with enough starch in his britches to stand up and say it straight out and for real.  Never mind that he's on his way out and so he risks absolutely nothing if he actually tells the fucking truth for a change, but hey - I can give the guy one last Atta Boy:

"Every dollar that we spend on fossil fuel development and use is another dollar we spend digging the graves of our grandchildren. And I'm not going to be a part of it anymore. I'm through."  -- Sen Tom Harkin, D-IA

hat tip = Democratic Underground

And So It Begins

New Xmas music From Kristen Bell, backed by Straight No Chaser:

Here Comes The Sun

On day 3 of a weather cycle that seems determined to destroy the resilience of even the cheeriest among us - science, muthuhfuckuh:

The surface of the sun from October 14th to 30th, 2014, showing sunspot AR 2192, the largest sunspot of the last two solar cycles (22 years). During this time sunspot AR 2191 produced six X-class and four M-class solar flares. 

The animation shows the sun in the ultraviolet 304 ångström wavelength, and plays at a rate of 52.5 minutes per second. It is composed of more than 17,000 images, 72 GB of data produced by the solar dynamics observatory (sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov) + (helioviewer.org). 

This animation has been rendered in 4K, and resized to the Youtube maximum resolution of 3840×2160. The animation has been rotated 180 degrees so that south is “up”. 

The audio is the ‘heartbeat’ of the sun, processed from SOHO HMI data by Alexander G. Kosovichev. Image data courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.”Image processing and animation by James Tyrwhitt-Drake.

To use this video in a commercial player or in broadcasts, please email licensing@storyful.com

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Give It A Try

Lamenting the dearth of good solid "librul" radio, Driftglass and BlueGal mentioned this on The Professional Left podcast today:

Netroots Radio

Friday Music (updated at 7:25 pm EST)

A quickie.

The Book Of Right On (cover) --Sarah Jarosz




And some Jackson Browne too:

Obama Hits Back

If only.

Sauce For Ganders

Seems like every time I get into any debate on any subject with any "conservative", it's all but inevitable for that "conservative" to tell me I really just want "the nanny state" to take care of me.

It's a tough one to rebut because it takes time (which the opponent doesn't give you), and you have to string a buncha things together (which the opponent insists on disrupting); it requires a bit of thought (which the opponent seldom allows himself to do), and assumes a fundamental level of knowledgeability (which the opponent refuses to acquire).

So here's the thing:  "What's the difference between my Nanny State and your Daddy State?"

You claim I want to be taken care of by a government that will meet my every need by stealing from somebody else.

At the same time, you say I shouldn't be involved in the decisions being made regarding what happens to me and mine; I should just shut up and go along with whatever you and your coin-operated politicians think I should be willing to kiss your ass for; and BTW - the stuff your Daddy State is handing to you and your guys is the stuff you're stealing from me and my guys, so go shit in your hat.

Need one more?  Both sides, motherfucker.  Since both sides do it; both sides are the same; both sides are to blame for whatever it is we wanna piss and moan about right now - well if the Nanny State's a thing, then the Daddy State has to be a thing too.  Booyah.

The Real Outrage

Olbermann brings it - and nothing will ever be the same.

It Just Ain't Healthy

Mashing up Christianism and Patriotism and Militarism - then taking impressionable young men and training them to put aside their instincts for compassion and kindness - and then arming them to the teeth and turning them loose in a place halfway around the world where they don't speak the language and the native culture is a complete mystery to them - what could possibly go wrong?



This is not (and never was) only about the wounds we can see - the savagery of war is trained into the minds of the people we send to fight it.  There's no way we can justify feeling shocked or appalled or somehow indignant when we find out some of these people have done what we've told them to do.

And let's try not to pretend these veterans can come home and "be normal" - nobody comes out of a war not fucked up way or another, civilians included.

The First Black Prez

In Remembrance

Lux aeterna, Luceat eis, Domine
Thy everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord.
Turn to me and be gracious, for my heart is in distress.
Oh God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
My tears linger at night, but joy comes in the morning light.
Lord, in your infinite mercy, grant them rest.
Rest forever more.

Veterans' Day

It's not just about what we want "our" guys to do to "their" guys.  

It's about what happens to everybody when we do the things war demands of us.

Adapt. Improvise. Overcome

Life goes on, but it may have to go on without us.

Black Fungus Eats Harmful Radiation in Chernobyl

BY CHRIS V. THANGHAM MAR 3, 2008 IN SCIENCE

Fungus living in the walls of a failed nuclear reactor in Chernobyl was found with high melanin content, implying it survived living under dangerous radiation. Fungus might be a possible food source in high-radiation places like outer space.

Black fungus was found growing on the walls of Chernobyl’s damaged and highly radioactive nuclear reactor by robots sent to scour the area. Later, scientists analyzed the fungus and found it contained high content of melanin, a pigment found in human skin that gives it color, as well as protection from solar and ultraviolet radiation.
Melanin is found in many fungal species. Scientists say the melanin found in fungus and humans are similar in chemical composition.

Nuclear (and other high-energy) reactions give off ionizing radiation, dangerous rays and particles that can damage genes and thus cause mutations and eventually cancer. With fungi, however, they seem to thrive under the same conditions.

Ekaterina Dadachova at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine explained the reason why fungi thrived in Chernobyl: She said just like pigment, chlorophyll converts sunlight into chemical energy that allows green plants to live and grow. The melanin helps fungi to make use of the ionizing radiation and makes them grow.

Researcher Arturo Casadevall, an immunologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York said to LiveScience.com:  "In general we think of radiation as something bad or harmful. Here we have a situation where these fungi appear to benefit, which is unexpected,"

So, the researchers wanted to test this theory and see whether it is reproducible. They did experiments on three species of fungi and found that ionizing radiation significantly boosted the growth of fungi that contained melanin.

As LiveScience.com reports: The researchers exposed two kinds of fungi – one that naturally contained melanin (Wangiella dermatitidis) and another that scientists induced to make the pigment (Crytococcus neoformans) – to levels of ionizing radiation about 500 times higher than normal, the doses one might see at high altitudes. Both species grew significantly faster, findings detailed in the May 23 issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

Although fungi seem to thrive in nuclear radiation, they do not clean it. They are only able to harness the energy that radioactive materials give off.

Scientists say this ability of fungi to live off ionizing radiation could be useful in space. Dadachova said: "Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets."

Today's Pix