April 2010
18 posts
We Won't Need Legs to Stand
Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens - We Won’t Need Legs to Stand
Sufi, you really need to get a new album out. Preferably before I’m old and decrepit. I realize you aren’t going to procure one album per state, but please, do make something.
Furthermore, the BQE and these orchestral/electronica arrangements (ahem. Run Rabbit Run & Enjoy Your Rabbit) aren’t cutting it.
Sorry Sufi, we love you, but it’s just not the same when there’s nothing remotely new to listen to.
<3
Urgent Action : Forced Sterilization in China
Local officials aim to sterilize 9559 people by 26 April, some against their will, in a drive to meet family planning targets in Puning City, Guangdong Province, southern China.
According to reports in the Chinese media, on April 7th, the local authorities in Puning City began a special campaign to sterilize people who already have at least one child, to ensure that local birth control quotas are met. The local authorities claim that by the end of April 11, the 20-day campaign had already met 50 per cent of its target. A local doctor, quoted in the Chinese media, said that his team was working from 8am until 4am the next day performing surgeries for sterilization. Local reports suggest at least some people are not freely consenting to being sterilized. Amnesty International considers forced sterilizations carried out by officials to amount to torture and the haste of the procedures raises questions about their safety and possible health impacts.
In addition, the Puning City authorities have detained 1377 family members of couples targeted for sterilization. Most of the detained are elderly and some are held in cramped conditions in houses which the local authorities are using temporarily as unofficial places of detention. This is widely seen to be a mechanism to pressure their relatives to undergo sterilizations.
The Puning City local authorities have defended the campaign saying that there are large numbers of migrant workers who are of childbearing age in the area and that some of the residents have misunderstood and hence not complied with the family planning regulations.
Some Background on the Issue:
At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, governments agreed that:
- All couples and individuals have the right to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. This includes their right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rights documents.
- The aim of family-planning programs must be to enable couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to do so and to ensure informed choices and make available a full range of safe and effective methods. The principle of informed free choice is essential to the long-term success of family-planning programs. Any form of coercion has no part to play. Governmental goals for family planning should be defined in terms of unmet needs for information and services. Demographic goals, while legitimately the subject of government development strategies, should not be imposed on family-planning providers in the form of targets or quotas for the recruitment of clients.
Email me if you’d be interested in sending an appeal : mahsa.taskindoust@gmail.com
OR if you know how Urgent Action works send your appeals to :
Chairman of the Puning City Population and Family Bureau
Hong Yuliang Zhuren
Liushajianshe Zhongduan
Puningshi 515300
Guangdongsheng
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Fax: 011 86 663 2900055
Email: pnjs@puning.gov.cn
Salutation: Dear Chairman
Puning City Mayor
Chen Shengliang Shizhang
Puningshi Zhengfu Bangongdalou Nanqu
Puningshi 40609
Guangdongsheng
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Fax: 011 86 663 2246909
Email: pnxxzx@puning.gov.cn
Salutation: Dear Mayor
Acts of Man
Midlake
Midlake - Acts of Man
“Well, you don’t have to be right … you just can’t be wrong.”
—Horowitz. AP Statistics.
Boy Lilikoi
Jónsi
Jónsi - Boy Lilikoi
I first listened to this a few months ago, after a friend made its existence known to me. I’m sure the majority of people reading/listening to this recognize the main singer’s brilliant voice, and no, it’s not coincidence, Jónsi (aka Jón Þór Birgisson) is also the lead singer of Sigur Rós, another producer of musical masterpieces.
So the song I have here for you all today, is I believe the first release from his new album. And holy sheesh, it’s pure bliss. Jónsi has truly managed to capture the essence of childhood in 4 minutes and 28 seconds. I can already hear this as the soundtrack for the next Disney classic.
And for all of you tri-state area residents, he’ll be performing in Terminal 5 on May 8th and 9th. If you’ve seen the Sigur Rós documentary, Heima, you know for a fact that his performance won’t be anything short of AMAZING, so for those of you who don’t have an AP exam the next day, GO SEE HIM.
Enjoy!
HARVARD LAW OF BIOLOGY.
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
“Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.”
—Edward Witten
Turns out Chris Brown and Jordin Sparks were wrong. You can live with no air (oxygen). →
wired.com
“In the muck of the deep Mediterranean seafloor, scientists have found the first multicellular animals capable of surviving in an entirely oxygen-free environment.
Some types of bacteria and other single-celled organisms can live without oxygen, but nothing as complex had been found as these three species of Loricifera, a group of marine-sediment dwellers who inhabit one of Earth’s most extreme and little-known environments.
“The discovery of these life forms opens new perspectives for the study of metazoan life in habitats lacking molecular oxygen,” wrote researchers led by Roberto Danovaro, a marine biologist at Italy’s Polytechnic University of Marche, in a study published April 6 in BMC Biology.
Like other Loricifera, the new species are sub-millimeter–long, Lovecraftian tangles of tentacle and shell, with their closest taxonomical relatives found among mud dragons and penis worms.
The new species, however, don’t have the mitochondria found in almost every other animal cell, converting oxygen and nutrients into chemical energy.
Even the few parasite species once thought to be mitochondria-free seem to have had them at some point in history, and possess mitochondrial remnants that perform the same essential functions.
Instead the new Loricifera species have structures called hydrogenosomes, which are found in some single-celled organisms and require no oxygen to produce chemical energy.
The evolutionary history of these creatures is not known, but they live in an environment reminiscent of Earth’s oceans some 600 million years ago, before the deep seas were oxygenated and large animals evolved, wrote Comenius University (Slovakia) biochemist Marek Mentel and Düsseldorf University (Germany) biologist William Martin in an accompanying commentary.
These “fascinating animals” provide a “glimpse of what a good part of Earth’s past ecology might have been like,” they wrote.”
Gym Volleyball
- Me: OUT
- Imbecile: NO IT WASN'T
- Me: That was CLEARLY out.
- Imbecile: HOW ABOUT YOU GET SOME NEW GLASSES, FOUR EYES. THAT WAS IN.
- I wasn't sure of the protocol for responding to being called four eyes...
Terrible Jokes: Earth Science Edition
Here in California, when a bridge falls down, we know it must be San Andreas’ Fault.
The main problem associated with limestone aquifers is Lyme disease.
Why did it rain money during the tornado? Because there was a “change” in the weather.
Does an excellent student of vulcanology graduate magma cum laude?
What does an earth science teacher say when he/she is upset? Cut the schist.
You look so gneiss.
My rocks are gneiss, don’t take them for granite.
A geologist was accused for throwing a lava rock at a tourist. He’s been charged for Basalt and battery
May the Quartz be with you
Paleontologists never Die they just slowly petrify
Geologist will date anything.
“I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled.”
—
Noam Chomsky during an interview by Svetlana Vukovic & Svetlana Lukic on Radio B92, Belgrade, Serbia, September 19, 2001.
Forever relevant but just rubbing it in to naysayers, watch the new video posted at WikiLeaks.
(via principialuis)
I would like to dedicate this post to SAM LEITER .
CONGRATULATIONS ON HARVARD! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
