 May 11, 2012 at 8:45 pm  Cuttlefish
The judge down in Florida found
She was guilty, and thus he was bound;
He must put her away…
And so women, today,
Learned a lesson—you must stand your ground.
Headline: Florida woman sentenced to 20 years in controversial warning shot case
So… shoot unarmed black teen while “standing your ground”? Released, only arrested after public outcry. Shoot warning shot while being black and female? 20 years, with state law giving the judge no discretion.
Like the ludicrous three-strikes laws, the lesson here is clear; no warning shots.
The law favors a clean kill.
May 11, 2012 at 8:40 am Cuttlefish
The Bible says to love your brother,
Respect your father and your mother,
Do what’s right for one another…
The good we’re meant to do
It says whom you may keep as slaves,
To stone the child who misbehaves,
And wicked is the man who shaves…
It’s evil, through and through
And everyone who simply looks
At what it bans and what it brooks
Will find they’re reading different books
And not a simple whole
Sometimes I think the path is best
To treat it as a Rorschach Test—
Inside, you find your views confessed
A mirror to your soul
May 10, 2012 at 6:26 pm Cuttlefish
Do you have them? They don’t show up every semester, so consider yourself fortunate if you get one, and powerball-level lucky to get two or more in a class. These are the students whose faces are an honest reflection of how well you have explained something. If you are less than clear, an eyebrow might go up, or a head might tilt just a bit. Another student might be nodding in agreement, but frankly, always nods in agreement, even if you are presenting the old, wrong, out-of-date view you are about to demolish.
But the barometer student is skeptical. Listens. Processes. Understands. And (most helpful to you) it’s written on her or his face.
Just spoke with one of three such students this semester (lucky me!), who I would have sworn was lukewarm about this class. I could not have been more wrong (I blame cultural differences; this student was from overseas). Once again, I am a happy Cuttlefish. And a sad Cuttlefish, because this particular barometer (indeed, two out of three of this semester’s barometers) is graduating, and the odds are we will never meet again.
I suppose by this time in my career I should be accustomed to never seeing people again after becoming invested in their lives. Maybe I am, and the sadness is not strange, but simply an appropriate reaction to the situation. “Accustomed” does not mean “immune”.
May 9, 2012 at 2:28 pm Cuttlefish
May 9, 2012 at 1:35 pm Cuttlefish
…for the “moment of silence”.
A moment of silence, a moment of prayer,
A moment of nothing, a bit of dead air
Just sit on your asses to show that you care
That’s all that we ask you to do.
No need to give money, or effort, or blood,
Just hush now, responding to fire or flood,
Tornado or hurricane, lava or mud,
Your silent support will come through!
May 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm Cuttlefish
I thought (but now, must say I thinked)
Tyrannosaurs were all extinct—
But now, a T-rex has been found
Alive! Not fossils in the ground!
The stories in the paper tell
This specimen’s alive and well,
And (if you can believe the News)
It’s even giving interviews!
May 8, 2012 at 1:49 pm Cuttlefish
Via Lousy Canuck, the news that a new production of Jesus Christ Superstar will feature Tim Minchin as Judas.
That’s the (very) good news. The bad news? After the jump:
May 7, 2012 at 7:20 pm Cuttlefish
For my money, one of the most powerful songs in all of musical theatre, as short as it is, is South Pacific’s “You’ve got to be carefully taught”. It was deemed inappropriate, controversial, anti-American…but it was perfect. More, after the jump:
May 6, 2012 at 8:27 pm Cuttlefish
No, not the skin of a Digital Cuttlefish. That would be icky. Rather, an installation at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences:
10 feet wide and 90 feet in length, this sculptural ribbon winds through the five story atrium of the museum and is made of 3600 tiles of LCD glass. It runs on roughly 75 watts, less power than a laptop computer. Animations are created by independently varying the transparency of each piece of glass.
The content cycles through twenty programs, ranging from clouds to rain drops to colonies of bacteria to flocking birds to geese to cuttlefish skin to pulsating black holes. The animations were created through a combination of algorithmic software modeling of natural phenomena and compositing of actual footage.
Exceedingly cool video after the jump. Embiggening strongly suggested.
May 6, 2012 at 4:45 pm Cuttlefish
In December, I passed along the story of Hawa Akther, whose husband cut off the fingers of her right hand when he found she was attending college.
The BBC has an update, with both good and bad news. The good news is, Ms. Akther is a remarkable woman. Her right hand has been surgically modified by rehabilitation doctors so that she can hold a pen or pencil, and she is right back on her quest to become a lawyer:
“All those horrible things happened to me because I wanted to study. So, I will pursue my education. Doctors say I cannot write [in] my exam for three hours at a stretch. So, I need a writer for the exam. But I will continue practising with my right hand,” she said.
Her determination to fulfil this objective has even tempted her to break rules at home.
“I had to register and pay exam fees three days after my fingers were cut off. So, my parents told me not to sit for them this year,” she said.
“But I didn’t want to miss it. So I took money from my mother’s handbag without her knowledge and paid my fee,” she said with a giggle.
The bad news is that she is but one example of what is a growing problem:
The 2011 Human Rights Report by the Odhikar organisation points out that violence against women is on the rise in the country.
It said that more than 300 women may have been killed in dowry-related violence last year. In addition to this, dozens of women were also killed in rape and acid attacks.
There is social stigma attached to reporting such incidents; I can only hope that Akther’s case makes her an international hero, that she can model perseverance and courage, and that newly empowered women will change the world.
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Let’s Have A Moment Of Silence…
…for the “moment of silence”.
A moment of silence, a moment of prayer,
A moment of nothing, a bit of dead air
Just sit on your asses to show that you care
That’s all that we ask you to do.
No need to give money, or effort, or blood,
Just hush now, responding to fire or flood,
Tornado or hurricane, lava or mud,
Your silent support will come through!