January 2015 archive

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 11 is the 11th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 354 days remaining until the end of the year (355 in leap years).

On January 11, 1908, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declares the massive Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona a national monument.

Though Native Americans lived in the area as early as the 13th century, the first European sighting of the canyon wasn’t until 1540, by members of an expedition headed by the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. Because of its remote and inaccessible location, several centuries passed before North American settlers really explored the canyon. In 1869, geologist John Wesley Powell led a group of 10 men in the first difficult journey down the rapids of the Colorado River and along the length of the 277-mile gorge in four rowboats.

By the end of the 19th century, the Grand Canyon was attracting thousands of tourists each year. One famous visitor was President Theodore Roosevelt, a New Yorker with a particular affection for the American West. After becoming president in 1901 after the assassination of President William McKinley, Roosevelt made environmental conservation a major part of his presidency. After establishing the National Wildlife Refuge to protect the country’s animals, fish and birds, Roosevelt turned his attention to federal regulation of public lands. Though a region could be given national park status–indicating that all private development on that land was illegal–only by an act of Congress, Roosevelt cut down on red tape by beginning a new presidential practice of granting a similar “national monument” designation to some of the West’s greatest treasures.

Grand Canyon National Park became a national park in 1919. So famous is this landmark to modern Americans that it seems surprising that it took more than thirty years for it to become a national park. President Theodore Roosevelt visited the rim in 1903 and exclaimed: “The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison–beyond description; absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world …. Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimity and loveliness. You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.”

Despite Roosevelt’s enthusiasm and his strong interest in preserving land for public use, the Grand Canyon was not immediately designated as a national park. The first bill to create Grand Canyon National Park had been introduced in 1882 and again in 1883 and 1886 by Senator Benjamin Harrison. As President, Harrison established the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve in 1893. Theodore Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Game Preserve by proclamation in 1906 and Grand Canyon National Monument in 1908. Senate bills to establish a national park were introduced and defeated in 1910 and 1911; the Grand Canyon National Park Act was finally signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919. The National Park Service, which had been established in 1916, assumed administration of the park.

The creation of the park was an early success of the environmental conservation movement; its National Park status may have helped thwart proposals to dam the Colorado River within its boundaries. (Lack of this fame may have enabled Glen Canyon Dam to be built upriver, flooding Glen Canyon and creating Lake Powell.) In 1975, the former Marble Canyon National Monument, which followed the Colorado River northeast from the Grand Canyon to Lee’s Ferry, was made part of Grand Canyon National Park. In 1979, UNESCO declared it as a World Heritage Site.

The Grand Canyon itself, including its extensive system of tributary canyons, is valued for the combination of large size, depth, and the exposed layering of colorful rocks dating back to Precambrian times. It was created through the incision of the Colorado River and its tributaries after the Colorado Plateau was uplifted and the Colorado River system developed along its present path.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: This Sunday’s guests are: Attorney General Eric Holder, and new chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC).

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are Attorney General Eric Holder; chair for the House Homeland Security Committee Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX); CBS correspondents Bob Orr and Michael Morell; David Ignatius, The Washington Post; and Farah Pandith, of the Council on Foreign Relations.

His panel guests are Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post; Jim VandeHei, Politico; and Peter Baker, The New York Times.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on this Sunday’s MTP are: Attorney General Eric Holder and ????

State of the Union: Gloria Borgis will host this Sunday. Her guests are Attorney General Eric Holder; Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

Paris attacks: A city reeling after 72 hours which saw the staff of a satirical magazine gunned down, two police officers shot dead and two sieges end violently

  Cole Moreton charts the chain of bloody events that stunned France

COLE MORETON   Sunday 11 January 2015

They got what they wanted. From the moment the Kouachi brothers climbed out of their black Citroën in a quiet street in Paris on Wednesday morning it was inevitable that they would die.

Everything they did and said in the following 48 hours suggested they wanted to be martyrs. Not for Islam, whatever they claimed, but for a corruption of that faith, a cult that takes the name of Allah but worships death and power.

“I was ready to die in battle,” said Chérif Kouachi as long ago as 2007, but that sounds noble and this was not. Instead he put on military clothing and a balaclava, loaded a pair of Kalashnikovs and walked with his brother towards the office of a satirical magazine called Charlie Hebdo, in the middle of a chilly morning in Paris.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Breakfast Tune: Leyla McCalla sings Rosemarie (Live)

Today in History

Breakfast News Below

I don’t mind admitting I kind of want the Panthers to win so that the Packers have another home game but I don’t expect the Seahawks to co-operate.  The Seahawks are, after all, the defending Champions and they’re really a much better team than the Panthers.

The Panthers have also lost their inside rushing defense in the person of 311 pound Star Lotulelei, one of those Pacific Island monsters who broke a foot this week in practice.

And then there is Century Link Field, one of the loudest Domes in the league.  The Pack will not be daunted by that, but the Panthers are younger and rawer and less used to distractions.

So here’s hoping for an upset, not that I dislike the Seahawks, but that I actively support the Pack and am a total cheesehead.

The game is on Faux starting at 8 pm.

Look, I have my reasons to hate the Patsies and like the Ravens the primary one being that the Ravens, since they are new, haven’t dinked around cities the way the Patsies have.

Oh, and Bill Belichick and Pat Brady are steroid addled assholes, but that’s so common in Throwball it’s hardly worth mentioning.

The truth is that I’d be very surprised to see the Ravens walk off the Foxborough turf victors.  Belichick has used Brady to build himself a buffer of talented role players without wasting time and money on a Quarterback hunt and it shows in the system which should last (given good luck and Robert Kraft staying out of the way which he seems inclined to do) beyond both their careers.

I still think they’re all thoroughly horrible people and brain damage only accounts for some of it although it helps.

The game is on NBC starting at 4:30 pm.

 Here’s how Zen meditation changed Steve Jobs’ life and sparked a design revolution

 BUSINESS INSIDER

When Steve Jobs showed up at the San Francisco airport at the age of 19, his parents didn’t recognize him.

Jobs, a Reed College dropout, had just spent a few months in India.

He had gone to meet the region’s contemplative traditions – Hinduism, Buddhism – and the Indian sun had darkened his skin a few shades.

The trip changed him in less obvious ways, too.

Although you couldn’t predict it then, his travels would end up changing the business world.

Back in the Bay Area, Jobs continued to cultivate his meditation practice. He was in the right place at the right time; 1970s San Francisco was where Zen Buddhism first began to flourish on American soil. He met Shunryu Suzuki, author of the groundbreaking “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind,” and sought the teaching of one of Suzuki’s students, Kobun Otogawa.

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

I wanted each of these stews to feature a nutritious vegetable along with the chicken and aromatics. In this way they are truly one-dish, nutrient-dense meals. Though I suggest serving them with rice, other grains or pasta, if carbs are an issue, know that these stews are very satisfying on their own.

I used skinless legs and boneless, skinless thighs for my chicken stews, and I sought out free-range organic chickens. While chicken breasts are lower in fat than the legs and thighs, they dry out when you stew them for very long. You can increase or decrease the number of chicken pieces according to your needs. If you’ve frozen a stew, it’s best to thaw it overnight in the refrigerator for the next night’s dinner. If the stew doesn’t thaw completely, heat gently in a casserole or use your microwave’s defrost function

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Dallas Goodtooth: Keystone XL would destroy our native lands. This is why we fight

The Oceti Sakowin, the traditional name for my Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota peoples, are rising up to protect Mother Earth. We are mobilizing a resistance that could prove to be the game changer in the fight to stop the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and help shut down the tar sand projects in northern Alberta.

Our resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline and other tar sand infrastructure is grounded in our inherent right to self-determination as indigenous peoples. As the original caretakers, we know what it will take to ensure these lands are available for generations to come. This pipeline will leak (pdf), it will contaminate the water. It will encourage greater tar sands development, which, in turn, will increase carbon emissions.

As Oceti Sakowin people, we cannot stand silent in the face of the potential ecological disaster that the pipeline promises our homelands, along with our brothers and sisters of the Cree and Dene First Nations in Alberta, where this carbon-intensive dirty oil comes from. Our acts of resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline are a perfect example of us wising up to the ongoing modern colonialist game, and a proactive step toward protecting future generations from the worst impacts of climate change.

Eugene Robinson: Journalists Must Stand Firm

Je suis Charlie Hebdo. If “freedom of expression” is to be more than an empty slogan, Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Paris cannot be allowed to have the chilling effect its murderous perpetrators intended.

Cartoons crudely lampooning the Prophet Muhammad may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the right to speak freely must encompass the right to offend, without fear or favor. Obnoxiousness is grounds for denunciation but not for censorship – and violence cannot be permitted to intimidate journalists into self-censorship.

It is clear that for the moment, at least, the attack on the Paris offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was a miserable failure. Masked gunmen coldly assassinated two police officers and 10 journalists-including several of France’s best-known cartoonists-with the aim of “avenging” drawings seen by some Muslims as blasphemous. Now, however, the cartoons at issue are receiving wider exposure than ever before-via newspapers, television networks and websites around the world.

This is a hopeful sign. But I fear it will be difficult to ensure that the Charlie Hebdo attack does not have a very different long-term impact. If we are not careful and vigilant, freedom of speech will indeed suffer.

And Now For Something Completely Different-

You see, a good writer can write about anything and make it mostly painless and accessible to the non-expert reader.  You need some style and a fair vocabulary, but no special expertise in the subject.  In fact expertise is kind of a handicap because what you are chronicling is a joint voyage of discovery with your partner, the reader, and if you know a lot more about things than they do and suppose some common connection you mostly limit your audience.

Which is why I’m proud of my ignorance.

I can read music, but not sight read it (i.e. hear the tune from the notation, I have to listen to it first and then I can say- Aha!  I know what this means).  I can make fart noises into tubes and, provided there are not too many buttons and I don’t have to push them very fast, produce sounds that are arguably recognizable as tunes.

By the time I was in 6th grade I had already advanced to the important position of first seat, third Trumpet where my duties were primarily to ensure that in those parts of pieces where we were actually supposed to be playing I and the rest of my section held our instruments in a fashion that could easily be mistaken by people with bad distance vision as contributing to the group effort without actually audibly detracting from it.

In my Junior High years it was gently suggested I take up the euphonium because, as hopeless as Leonard Falcone pronounced me, I was better at that than Trumpet and in due course I rose to section lead and finally switched to French Horn as a Senior since we were one short in the Mellophone line (Weird French Horn trivia- I no longer remember what exactly that 4th key does and playing French Horn can mess with your heart rhythm, seriously, French Horn players are about 4x more likely than average people to die of heart attacks).

Oh, and we marched.  Field shows in the fall and parades in the spring.  Our great and bitter rivals for state supremacy were the hated and despised East Slime.  Screw the Runball (our Coach didn’t believe in the Pass very much so our offense was run left, run right, run up the middle, and punt) team, those people were in the stands to see us.

This experience (13 years of it) warped me profoundly to the point where I enjoy and am impressed by groups like the Mummers and DCI Bands, and one of my favorite pranks is to take a police whistle and induce a roll off so the band plays in front of my house.

So, fun games you can play with a marching band.  Here’s how you do it with the “Commandant’s Own”.  Remember, these folks are trained combat infantrymen for whom this is only a hobby.

Did you catch that last tune?  It was Stars and Stripes Forever, the National March of the United States composed by the “March King”, John Philip Sousa who was director of the band from 1880 to 1892.  He wrote over 136 marches, most of them entirely forgettable except you hear them all the time, and some Operettas that sound like marches.

In his day he was about the most famous native composer from the U.S. among a European audience that regarded our Art Music as crude and simplistic, even compared to the Russians.  He wrote novels including The Transit of Venus (which was also a march) that is entirely less erotic than the title might suggest. “It was about a group of misogynists called the Alimony Club who, as a way of temporarily escaping the society of women, embark on a sea voyage to observe the transit of Venus. The captain’s niece, however, had stowed away on board and soon won over the men.”  His other best known works are The Fifth String and Pipetown Sandy.

(A) young violinist made a deal with the Devil for a magic violin with five strings. The strings can excite the emotions of Pity, Hope, Love and Joy – the fifth string was of Death and can be played only once before causing the player’s own death. He was unable to win the love of the woman he desired. At a final concert, he played upon the death string.

…

Pipetown Sandy… included a satirical poem titled “The Feast of the Monkeys”. The poem described “a lavish party attended by variety of animals, however, overshadowed by the King of Beasts, the lion…who allows the muttering guests the privilege of watching him eat the entire feast”. At the end of his gluttony, the lion explained, “Come all rejoice, You’ve seen your monarch dine.”

He was famous and avid trap shooter who helped found the Amateur Trapshooting Association– “Let me say that just about the sweetest music to me is when I call, ‘pull,’ the old gun barks, and the referee in perfect key announces, ‘dead’.”

He (as you might imagine) invented the Sousaphone as a Tuba replacement and you need a very special kind of cheek vibrating fart noise to make it work at all.  The fact that the fiberglass ones sound exactly the same as the much heavier brass ones really says all you need to say about the instrument

What makes a March a March?

Well, first of all is the strict enforcement of the 1 and 3 accents in a bar of common time.  Then you play it twice as fast (cut time) and loud.

I am a member of a community Marching Band that mostly does Fireman’s Parades, but I haven’t played or practiced in years.  My activist brother, the Music Major, is a pretty regular attender and he keeps trying to tempt me into a comeback-

“All you have to do is play fast and loud”, he says.

There are free beers and hotdogs at the end too.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.