There is always a sense of safety when we blame someone even
if we are the ones on the wrong. Blame game is usually a self-protective
response which is normally aimed at protecting our under-performance. Humans
use it to shield themselves from repercussion. Considering the above
definition, will I be justified to say that one of the plagues eating America
is blame game? The whites are pointing their fingers at blacks while blacks are
pointing at whites. Because of this counterproductive approach to sensitive
matters, the bridge between white and black Americans continue to widen every
other day. Surely, if racism is the sin of White America, irresponsibility is
the sin of Black America.
The Revolutionary war in 1770s gave the nation a chance to
reach for independence and freedom.
The reason why we went to war in the 1770s was to fight
injustice, unfairness and oppression. Britain passed laws which gave them power
to milk money from their colonists including America. In 1763 the French and
Indian war which was fought North America left a huge financial dent on Great
Britain. They demanded taxes from America so as to cover the debts. This led to
discontent among Americans who felt that the reason why Britain went to war was
to strengthen its empire. Anyway, America's victory during this war led to
independence and freedom. But, would you really rate America as a free country?
Aren't some of our laws aimed at benefiting the elite few?
The civil war in the 1860s gave the nation a chance to rid
itself of slavery and racism.
During the civil war America was divided. States which
supported slave trade went against Abraham Lincoln while those who valued human
life stood by him. This was a grant opportunity for America to rid itself of
racism and slavery. It seemed as if we learnt our lessons during that time. But
did we? Could it be correct to say that the war was won but the ideologies
behind the war are still tacked somewhere in people's minds? Could that be the
reason why there is so much insecurity and mistrust towards whites by blacks.
Would I be justified to say that this is the reason why whites feel superior to
blacks?
America keeps trying to forget what it is, without changing
from what it is.
But really, what is the pink elephant in the room? The
American dream is citizens' (whether black or white) ability to achieve success
through hard work and willpower. There has to be a level playing field. We have
to deal with the real issues if we want a change. After all, you can't change
what you don't see.
America a house divided against itself cannot stand.
The American people are one. For a long time we have been
separated by race, background, and skin color instead of being unified by our
same nationality as well as citizenry. Racial discrimination and ethnic
isolation are toxic and should be avoided by all means.
We need to accept that we are all to blame for what our
country has turned out to become. We need to agree that, if racism is the sin
of White America, irresponsibility is the sin of Black America. Let us take our
country back from disunity and division. It can be done. Remember, black or
white, we are each others' brothers keeper and strength.
Ranches Lee Hall is a pastor. He's been online now for
several years operating different blogs and online businesses and providing
helpful information. He enjoy songwriting, reading the bible, playing the
keyboard or piano he currently runs http://stopracialprofiling.org
This year, we have witnessed, nearly every day, some sort of
report/ reports, questioning particular behaviors, actions, motivations,
influences, and/ or reasons, certain elected officials, have done something! If
you review almost any of these reports, from a variety of different media, you
might believe you are reading about totally different events. For example,
here, in New York, I read four newspapers, daily. The NY Post often emphasizes
and/ or reports, far differently than, either Newsday, the NY Times, or, even,
The Wall Street Journal (although the Journal and Post, share the same
ownership). How can someone know, what's actually going on, and differentiate
between speculation, wishful thinking, or accurate interpretation?
1. Speculation: How is the connecting the dots, being
done? Is it based on digging deeply, discovering additional facts, pursuing
leads, etc, or is it mere speculation? How much does the specific media's
position, conform to the political views and preferences of the editors, etc?
How extreme is the connection? Is there only one situation, being cited, or are
there, a variety of related circumstances? In a courtroom, unsupported
speculation, is referred to as Circumstantial Evidence! How much effort is
made, to discover additional facts, that bring more light, to the matter? Is
this speculation, somewhat innocent, and based on a degree of journalistic
laziness and/ or convenience, or on a particular political position?
2. Wishful thinking: Does the source of the
information, follow the leads, and discover information, or, is it, based on
wishful thinking, wish supports your desired perspective and view? Is the
reporter delving deeply, or simply, trying to support a specific, preconceived
notion, idea and/ or perspective? Is this reporting based on journalistic
integrity, or irresponsible skewing of facts, to distort certain positions?
3. Accurate judgment: If a reporter follows the facts,
without trying to interpret prematurely, and gathers enough information, to be
able to develop a fair and accurate judgment, he or she, is the rare,
principled political reporter! Rather than jump to conclusions, we should all
carefully review the source of the information, examine the record, and
whether, they have previously, let their personal, political philosophy, direct
their reporting!
Beware when someone connects the dots! Examine the
thoroughness, objectivity, fairness, and accuracy of their information -
gathering procedure!
Richard has owned businesses, COO, CEO, Director of
Development, consultant, professionally run events, worked on political
campaigns, consulted to thousands, and conducted personal development seminars,
for 4 decades. Rich has written three books and thousands of articles. Website:
http://plan2lead.net
and LIKE the Facebook page for common sense politics: http://facebook.com/commonsense4all
“Neo” skull of Homo naledi from the Lesedi Chamber. John Hawks/Wits University
Africa’s richest fossil hominin site has revealed more of its treasure. It’s been a year and a half since scientists announced that a new hominin species, which they called Homo naledi, had been discovered in the Rising Star Cave outside Johannesburg.
Now they say they have established and published the age of the original naledi fossils that garnered global headlines in 2015. Homo naledi lived sometime between 335 and 236 thousand years ago, making it relatively young.
They’ve also announced the discovery of a second chamber in the Rising Star cave system, which contained additional Homo naledi specimens. These include a child and the partial skeleton of an adult male with a well-preserved skull. They have named the skeleton “Neo” – a Sesotho word meaning “a gift”.
The Conversation Africa’s Science Editor Natasha Joseph asked Professor John Hawks, a member of the team, to explain the story behind these finds.
To an ordinary person, 236 000 years is a very long time ago. Why does the team suggest that in fact, Homo naledi is a “young” species?
The course of human evolution has taken the last seven million years since our ancestors diverged from those of chimpanzees and bonobos. The first two-thirds of that long history, called australopiths, were apelike creatures who developed the trick of walking upright on two legs.
Around two million years ago some varieties of hominins took the first real steps in a human direction. They’re the earliest clear members of our genus, Homo, and belong to species like Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo rudolfensis.
Homo naledi looks in many ways like these first members of Homo. It’s even more primitive than these species in many ways, and has a smaller brain than any of them. People outside our team who have studied the fossils mostly thought they should be around the same age. A few had the radical idea that H. naledi might have lived more recently, maybe around 900,000 years ago.
Nobody thought that these fossils could actually have come from the same recent time interval when modern humans were evolving, a mere 236 to 335 thousand years ago.
How do you figure out a fossil’s age?
We applied six different methods. The most valuable of these were electron spin resonance (ESR) dating, and uranium-thorium (U-Th) dating. ESR relies on the fact that teeth contain tiny crystals, and the electron energy in these crystals is affected by natural radiation in the ground over long periods of time after fossils are buried.
U-Th relies on the fact that water drips into caves and forms layers of calcite, which contain traces of uranium. The radioactive fraction of uranium decays into thorium slowly over time. So the proportion of thorium compared to uranium gives an estimate of the time since the calcite layers formed. One of these calcite deposits, called a flowstone, formed above the H. naledi fossils in the Dinaledi Chamber. That flowstone helps to establish the minimum age: the fossils must be older than the flowstone above them.
For these two methods, our team engaged two separate labs and asked them to process and analyse samples without talking to each other. Their processes produced the same results. This gives us great confidence that the results are reliable.
What does the discovery of Homo naledi’s age mean for our understanding of human history and evolution?
For at least the past 100 years, anthropologists have assumed that most of the evolution of Homo was a story of progress: brains got bigger over time, technology became more sophisticated and teeth got smaller as people relied more upon cleverness to get better food and prepare it by cooking.
We thought that once culture really got started, our evolution was driven by a feedback loop – better food allowed bigger brains, more clever adaptations, more sophisticated communication. That enabled better technology, which yielded more food, and so on like a snowball rolling downhill.
No other hominin species could compete with this human juggernaut. You would never see more than one form of human in a single part of the world, because the competition would be too intense. Other forms, like Neanderthals, existed within regions of the world apart from the mainstream leading to modern humans in Africa. But even they were basically human with large brains.
That thinking was wrong.
Africa south of the equator is the core of human evolutionary history. That’s where today’s human populations were most genetically diverse, and that diversity is just a small part of what once existed there. Different lineages of archaic humans once lived in this region. Anthropologists have found a few fossil remnants of these archaic populations. They’ve tried to connect those remnants in a straight line. But the genetic evidence suggests that they were much more complex, with deep divisions that occasionally intertwined.
H. naledi shows a lineage that existed for probably more than a million years, maybe two million years, from the time it branched from our family tree up to the last 300,000 years. During all this time, it lived in Africa with archaic lineages of humans, with the ancestors of modern humans, maybe with early modern humans themselves. It’s strikingly different from any of these other human forms, so primitive in many aspects. It represents a lost hominin community within which our species evolved.
I think we have to reexamine much of what we thought we knew about our shared evolutionary past in Africa. We know a lot of information from a few very tiny geographic areas. But the largest parts of the continent are unknown – they have no fossil record at all.
Explorers Mathabela Tsikoane, Maropeng Ramalepa, Dirk van Rooyen, Steven Tucker (seated), and Rick Hunter (seated) inside the Rising Star cave system. Wits University/Marina Elliott
We’re working to change that, and as our team and others make new discoveries, I’m pretty sure we are going to find more lineages that have been hidden to us. H. naledi will not be the last.
The first Homo naledi discoveries were made in the Dinaledi Chamber. What led researchers to the second chamber? And what did you find there?
The Dinaledi Chamber is one of the most significant fossil finds in history. After excavating only a very tiny part of this chamber, the sample of hominin specimens is already larger than any other single assemblage in Africa.
The explorers who first found these bones, Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker, saw what the team was doing when they were excavating in the chamber. The pair realised that they might have seen a similar occurrence in another part of the cave system. The Rising Star system has more than two kilometres of mapped passages underground. In another deep chamber, accessed again through very tight underground squeezes, there were hominin bones exposed on the surface.
Our team first began systematic survey of this chamber, which we named the Lesedi Chamber, in 2014. For two years Marina Elliott led excavations, joined at times by most of the team’s other experienced underground excavators. They were working in a situation where bones are jammed into a tight blind tunnel. Only one excavator can fit at a time, belly-down, feet sticking out. It is an incredibly challenging excavation circumstance.
Geologist Dr Hannah Hilbert-Wolf studying difficult to reach flowstones in a small side passage in the Dinaledi Chamber. Wits University
The most significant discovery is a partial skeleton of H. naledi, with parts of the arms, legs, a lot of the spine and many other pieces, as well as a beautifully complete skull and jaw. We named this skeleton “Neo”. We also recovered fragments of at least one other adult individual, and one child, although we suspect these bones may come from one or two more individuals.
Is there a way for people to view these discoveries in person?
On May 25 – Africa Day – Maropeng at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site outside Johannesburg will open a new exhibit with the discoveries from the Lesedi Chamber and the Dinaledi Chamber together for the first time.
For people outside South Africa, the data from our three-dimensional scans of the new Lesedi fossils are available online.
Anyone can download the 3D models, and people with access to a 3D printer can print their own physical copies of the new fossils, as well as the fossils from the Dinaledi Chamber. It’s a great way for people to see the evidence for themselves.
Many Wallacedene residents have been without electricity because of faulty installation
By Vincent Lali
13 July 2017 Electrification has been completed at Wallacedene
temporary relocation area, but many residents say the Eskom-installed
boxes are faulty. Photo: Vincent Lali
Residents in a temporary relocation area (TRA) in Wallacedene,
Kraaifontein, have been without electricity for months because of faulty
electricity boxes installed by Eskom.
Some residents have returned to candles and paraffin, while others
connect to their neighbours if they have electricity. In some cases,
residents have electricity boxes that work, but they have not been
getting their free electricity allocation since the boxes were
installed. The City provides poor households with 25 or 60 free kilowatt
hours per month depending on total usage (less than 250 kWh or less
than 450 kWh on average per month).
Community leader Sibusiso Gibson says he has reported the problem numerous times to the manager in charge of electrification.
According to Eskom, the overall electrification of the TRA is
complete and the last 38 customers were connected on 30 April. Eskom
says it is in the the process of rectifying the problem “and could only
attend to the problem once the customers brought it to our attention”.
But Gibson says he has been calling the manager in charge for months.
“He always promises to come and sort out these problems, or says
electricians are already on their way … In the end, nobody ever comes to
help us.”
Resident Xolani Dimanda said his electricity box was installed in
February and it has never worked. The electricians who installed it said
it still needed a meter box to be attached. They said they were waiting
for meter boxes from the City of Cape Town.
Resident Busisiwe Siganga also said that the electricians who
installed her box told her they had run out of meter boxes. They
promised to return but did not.
Sibanga then connected to her neighbour, but after the recent rains
there was a short and she is now without electricity. Sibanga had waited
six years for the electrification of Wallacedene. “I want the
electricity box to work so that I can cook and boil water to wash my
kids and keep my place warm,” she said. Siganga has two children, aged
two and 11. “My kids’ grant money is not enough to buy electricity, so I
desperately need free electricity,” she said. GroundUp spoke to several
other residents with similar problems.
The City of Cape Town referred GroundUp to Eskom.
Provincial communication manager at Eskom, Jolene Henn, said, “We
have found some meters were in fact installed faulty and we have taken
this up directly with the supplier.”
She said, “A contractor has been appointed to correct the faulty
meters and we are anticipating all work to be done by 16 July 2017.” Busisiwe Siganga, 28, says the electricians never finished the installation in her shack. Photo: Vincent Lali
Published originally on
GroundUp
.
It was in April 2016 that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media platform was providing its nearly two billion users the opportunity to livestream content. The move was viewed as a natural extension of the platform’s primary goal: providing a space for the average person to share their daily experiences, from the mundane to the meaningful.
Almost as quickly, users found ways to live-broadcast the worst of their nature, including the “Easter Day slaughter” in which the fatal shooting of a 74-year-old Cleveland grandfather was livestreamed.
Many have referred to these behaviors as Facebook’s “dark side” and demanded that the company find a solution to prevent such antisocial behavior.
However, a brief look through the history of social media shows us that dark behaviors are neither unique to Facebook nor something new to today’s users.
Stories of sexual aggression turned perhaps darker in 1998, when technology journalist Julian Dibbell wrote about a sexual assault that took place in a text-based online world called LambdaMoo. The notion of a sexual assault online might seem odd given that users have no physical contact with one another. Yet, a LambdaMoo user named “Mr. Bungle” hacked the program in a way that allowed him to have complete control over other users’ behaviors, such as their conversations and descriptions of their movements.
He used this hack to cause users to engage in obscene and violent sexual acts with their own bodies, having the players describe where and how they were touching themselves and others, but without consent, according to Dibbell’s account. Mr. Bungle claimed that his actions were just a prank, despite his victims’ insistence that they had been humiliated by his actions (or at least the actions that he forced them to perform or describe while performing). The story is notable, given that online relationships can be just as intimate and important as offline ones.
Later in 2006, users of MySpace would hear the tragic story of Megan Meier, a Missouri teenager who took her own life after the boy she met online (a MySpace user named “Josh”) shunned her. It was only later, after investigations were done, that Megan’s family found out that the boy “Josh” was really the mother of a girl that Megan had recently gotten into a fight with. That incident led to the passage of the United States’ first cyberbullying laws.
Understanding social media
These stories are examples of what can happen when a single user discovers ways to use a technology that weren’t intended by designers: using the anonymity of CompuServe to deceive, using clever programming scripts to alter other users’ behaviors, using blogs to draw attention to a minor offense, and using social media to create a false identity. In each case, deceptions and actions had dramatic real-life consequences for those involved.
Anyone can download the 3D models, and people with access to a 3D printer can print their own physical copies of the new fossils, as well as the fossils from the Dinaledi Chamber. It’s a great way for people to see the evidence for themselves.
To combat misuse of livestreaming, Facebook recently announced the