No Wonder Kathleen {{hearts}} Sarah Palin

They are the same people.

Back when Kathleen quit blogging and then decided to start again, she deleted all of her comments.  She’s getting ready to do the same thing again.

Palin is pushing back on the very point she used to stay in the news.

They both lie and use their femaleness to try to make themselves to look better.

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Proselytizing

With what happened at Fort Hood, and the relentless stream of scary Muslim stories in the U.S. — tonight a report on the local news that some Mosques here are sending money back to Iran, I just have to point and laugh.

For a long time, churches here in the U.S. have been funding people to spread out around the world to proselytize. When I was a pre-teen, my mom’s church was where I discovered Africa — through its program to send missionaries there.

With the fall of the former Soviet Union, missionaries flooded Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. I can’t tell you how many of my students in Latvia practiced their English with Mormons around pool tables. And the other Christians were there, too.

So why is anyone surprised that Muslims are proselytizing here in the U.S.? Why worry that there are Muslims in our armed forces? Why be concerned about growing Muslim populations?

I admit I am an innocent bystander. I don’t really care what crazy omniscient being you believe in, and none of them will convince me that their God is the one, but I still find it calmly humorous that now Christians are getting bent about Muslims horning in on their turf. Religions are funny that way.

Big News in Paloeanthropology

It’s on The News Hour right now.  The fossilized bones of a mostly bipedal specimen have been found and analyzed.  It took 17 years.  The fossils are 4.4 million years old.  In other words, they predate Lucy.  The site is in Ethiopia — just like Lucy’s site is — and so the fossils are a national treasure and will be kept there.  Also, the Ethiopians had a major part in the excavations and analysis.

This is one of those times I wish I had cable or satellite because the special about the whole process will be on the Discovery Channel.  It  airs on October 11th, so perhaps I can persuade a friend to figure out how to record it so I can play it on my DVR . . . . .

Documentary on Chile

Tonight on P.O.V., the documentary The Judge and the General will be on PBS.  Elizabeth Farnsworth, a long time News Hour reporter, is one of the films producers and she was on tonight to preview it.  It airs at 10 p.m. here in Houston.  I’m going to tape it while I watch it and will try to write a bit about it tomorrow. 

If you have HDTV, it is also showing the next two nights on KUHT’s second channel.

The answer to white poverty

Sorry, I just had to rip that off from my favorite wingnut, Kathleen.

She put up a post, leeching off another, as she does often, (and I am here) about poverty in the black community.  Numerically, it has always been the case that whites have a significantly larger number of their own in poverty, but wealthy whites see those poor whites as potential voters (affirmative action is taking money and jobs from you, so vote for me!) or too insignificant a number to be bothered with (white trash is to be expected).

Kathleen, and the writer she points to, have a benevolent view toward African-Americans.  It’s so patronizing as to be nauseating.  Just look at what she read, linked to, and got on memeorandum and weep.  Kathleen McKinley, a whiter than white white person (who mysteriously claims that her in-laws are Italian) will tell all black folks how to pull themselves out of poverty.

Some numbers:

Total number of people in poverty (by government standards):

1. White only= 237,619

2. Black only = 37,306

3. Asian only = 13,177

4. Hispanic (of any race)  = 44,784

Wow!  Not really.  The majority of poor people are white.  Elite whites like Kathleen don’t care about them.  She’d much rather tell Black Americans what to do.  Should white people do as she suggests, i.e. “Marry the mother of your children and stay married.”  Would that help reduce the number of poor white people?

Some more numbers (from the same source — the government):

The percentage of those in poverty who live at 600% of poverty:

White only: 186,935, 78.5%

Black only: 33,627, 90.1%

Asian only: 9,590, 72.8%

Hispanic (all races):  41,523, 92.7%

We, our country, are failing all of them.  Bill Bennett wants to know who the “they” is in sermons that are essentially accurate.  Bennett, it is you, and Kathleen, and people like you who ignore the greater whole of us, our country.

Tend to your white folk before you shake your finger at the black community.  It’s the way you point your finger that makes you racist.  Bennett claims that his wife works 80 hours a week trying to get blacks to practice abstinence.   Shouldn’t she spend all those hours (if possible) to talk to white kids?   She talks to all kids?  Ok.  Her husband has claimed on his show that it’s a black problem.  Ok.

Look at the numbers.  Why should anyone take a wealthy whites’ view of the solution to poverty seriously?  I think it’s in the Bible.  Something about throwing stones . . .

Something new.

It’s time.

Obama ’08

Update:  I forgot to note that those numbers are in thousands.  I found another source, American Factfinder.  Here’s the basic info from that site:

People below poverty level:

White only  17,890,083

Black only   8,968,940

Asian only  1,381,226

Hispanic (any race)  9,293,416

My point is still the same — almost twice as many whites live in poverty as blacks.

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Lucy’s Coming to Houston

Actually, she’s probably already here, but the exhibit will open at the Houston Museum of Natural Science this Friday.  Tickets are $20 or $12 depending on your group.  I’m extremely excited about having the opportunity to see this incredibly important fossil.  This is Lucy’s first trip out of Ethiopia, and Houston is the first stop on the the tour.  I’ve got to tip my hat to the folks at HMNS.   I can’t think of a comparable event in another discipline.  The Ethiopians have held this treasure so close for so many years, it is truly monumental that they trust HMNS and others so much.

Lucy was discovered in 1974 in the Hadar area in Ethiopia by Don Johanson’s group.  Her remains are the prime specimen of the group Australopithecus afarensis, dated between 3.9 and 2.9 mya, and are still the most complete of any found.  Along with the fossil footprints (dated 3.5 mya) discovered in Laetoli in Kenya, and the additional fossil finds at Hadar, Lucy is the earliest mark of bipedalism and for the gradual transition of primates from the trees to land mammals.

While my focus was in primatology for my undergrad degree, and I switched to education for my master’s, I still keep up with paleontology and actually teach the subject to my upper level ESL students via reading.  Whether I teach that particular class or not, I hope to organize a group of students to visit the exhibit this next session.

The Houston Chronicle has an interviewwith HMNS Director Joel Bartsch.

A little background from MSNBC.