Diversity: No Holding Back the Tide
From today’s AOL News/ Huffpost:
So here’s the thing. In the USA, as in many countries, people study their ancestry, their bloodlines. Some people want those bloodlines to make them special, but anyone who has read history in any big-picture kind of way understands that most of history is people coming and going, waves of migration, immigration and emmigration, mostly depending on food supply, but often, too, depending on employment opportunities. Bottom line, most of it is about survival.
Now, blood. When we go to the hospital, or are taken there after an accident, do we ask whose blood it is that we receive when we need a transfusion? Blood is blood. The match to your antibodies and needs may be from another, despised race. Do we really know who our fathers are? Do women raped always admit to being raped? Do women admit to having a relationship outside of marriage? Many a child is born whose parenthood is not what it is claimed to be.
National DNA testing is controversial. Kuwait has been trying to do DNA testing to construct a profile for who is or is not Kuwaiti. 🙂 Do you really want to know?
Minority Birth Rate Now Surpasses Whites In US, Census Shows
By HOPE YEN 05/17/12 03:16 AM ET
WASHINGTON — For the first time, racial and ethnic minorities make up more than half the children born in the U.S., capping decades of heady immigration growth that is now slowing.
New 2011 census estimates highlight sweeping changes in the nation’s racial makeup and the prolonged impact of a weak economy, which is now resulting in fewer Hispanics entering the U.S.
“This is an important landmark,” said Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau who is now a sociologist at Howard University. “This generation is growing up much more accustomed to diversity than its elders.”
The report comes as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legality of Arizona’s strict immigration law, with many states weighing similar get-tough measures.
“We remain in a dangerous period where those appealing to anti-immigration elements are fueling a divisiveness and hostility that might take decades to overcome,” Harrison said.
As a whole, the nation’s minority population continues to rise, following a higher-than-expected Hispanic count in the 2010 census. Minorities increased 1.9 percent to 114.1 million, or 36.6 percent of the total U.S. population, lifted by prior waves of immigration that brought in young families and boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years.
But a recent slowdown in the growth of the Hispanic and Asian populations is shifting notions on when the tipping point in U.S. diversity will come – the time when non-Hispanic whites become a minority. After 2010 census results suggested a crossover as early as 2040, demographers now believe the pivotal moment may be pushed back several years when new projections are released in December.
The annual growth rates for Hispanics and Asians fell sharply last year to just over 2 percent, roughly half the rates in 2000 and the lowest in more than a decade. The black growth rate stayed flat at 1 percent.
The immigrants staying put in the U.S. for now include Narcisa Marcelino, 34, a single mother who lives with her two daughters, ages 10 and 5, in Martinsburg, W.Va. After crossing into the U.S. from Mexico in 2000, she followed her brother to the eastern part of the state just outside the Baltimore-Washington region. The Martinsburg area is known for hiring hundreds of migrants annually to work in fruit orchards. Its Hispanic growth climbed from 14 percent to 18 percent between 2000 and 2005 before shrinking last year to 3.3 percent, still above the national average.
Marcelino says she sells food from her home to make ends meet for her family and continues to hope that one day she will get a hearing with immigration officials to stay legally in the U.S. She aspires to open a restaurant and is learning English at a community college so she can help other Spanish-language speakers.
If she is eventually deported, “it wouldn’t be that tragic,” Marcelino said. “But because the children have been born here, this is their country. And there are more opportunities for them here.”
Of the 30 large metropolitan areas showing the fastest Hispanic growth in the previous decade, all showed slower growth in 2011 than in the peak Hispanic growth years of 2005-2006, when the construction boom attracted new migrants to low-wage work. They include Lakeland, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; Atlanta; Provo, Utah; Las Vegas; and Phoenix. All but two – Fort Myers, Fla., and Dallas-Fort Worth – also grew more slowly last year than in 2010, hurt by the jobs slump.
Pointing to a longer-term decline in immigration, demographers believe the Hispanic population boom may have peaked.
“The Latino population is very young, which means they will continue to have a lot of births relative to the general population,” said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the Population Reference Bureau. “But we’re seeing a slowdown that is likely the result of multiple factors: declining Latina birth rates combined with lower immigration levels. If both of these trends continue, they will lead to big changes down the road.”
William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the census data, noted that government debates over immigration enforcement may now be less pressing, given slowing growth. “The current congressional and Supreme Court interest in reducing immigration – and the concerns especially about low-skilled and undocumented Hispanic immigration – represent issues that could well be behind us,” he said.
Minorities made up roughly 2.02 million, or 50.4 percent of U.S. births in the 12-month period ending July 2011. That compares with 37 percent in 1990.
In all, 348 of the nation’s 3,143 counties, or 1 in 9, have minority populations across all age groups that total more than 50 percent. In a sign of future U.S. race and ethnic change, the number of counties reaching the tipping point increases to more than 690, or nearly 1 in 4, when looking only at the under age 5 population.
The counties in transition include Maricopa (Phoenix), Ariz.; King (Seattle), Wash.; Travis (Austin), Texas; and Palm Beach, Fla., where recent Hispanic births are driving the increased diversity among children. Also high on the list are suburban counties such as Fairfax, Va., just outside the nation’s capital, and Westchester, N.Y., near New York City, where more open spaces are a draw for young families who are increasingly minority.
According to the latest data, the percentage growth of Hispanics slowed from 4.2 percent in 2001 to 2.5 percent last year. Their population growth would have been even lower if it weren’t for their relatively high fertility rates – seven births for every death. The median age of U.S. Hispanics is 27.6 years.
Births actually have been declining for both whites and minorities as many women postponed having children during the economic slump. But the drop since 2008 has been larger for whites, who have a median age of 42. The number of white births fell by 11.4 percent, compared with 3.2 percent for minorities, according to Kenneth Johnson, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire.
Asian population increases also slowed, from 4.5 percent in 2001 to about 2.2 percent. Hispanics and Asians still are the two fastest-growing minority groups, making up about 16.7 percent and 4.8 percent of the U.S. population, respectively.
Blacks, who comprise about 12.3 percent of the population, have increased at a rate of about 1 percent each year. Whites have increased very little in recent years.
Other findings:
_The migration of black Americans back to the South is slowing. New destinations in the South, including Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Raleigh, N.C., and Orlando, Fla., saw sharp drop-offs in black population growth as the prolonged housing bust kept African-Americans locked in place in traditional big cities. Metro areas including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco had reduced declines or gains.
_Nine U.S. counties in five states saw their minority populations across all age groups surpass 50 percent last year. They were Sutter and Yolo in California; Quitman in Georgia; Cumberland in New Jersey; Colfax in New Mexico; and Lynn, Mitchell, Schleicher and Swisher in Texas.
_Maverick County, Texas, had the largest share of minorities at 96.8 percent, followed by Webb County, Texas, and Wade Hampton, Alaska, both at 96 percent.
_Four states – Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Texas – as well as the District of Columbia have minority populations that exceed 50 percent.
The census estimates used local records of births and deaths, tax records of people moving within the U.S., and census statistics on immigrants. The figures for “white” refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity.
___
Associated Press writer John Raby in Charleston, W.Va., contributed to this report.
Arizona Crazy Time
As we left the Petrified Forest, I said “That is so weird. My phone says it’s 1:20 but the car clock says 2:20. What does your phone say?”
His phone also said 1:20.
“Did we cross another date line?” I wondered.
“No! Look at the map, the date line is over on the other side of Arizona!” AdventureMan explained.
“How can it be 1:20? It feels like 2:20, and we spent so much time at the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, how could it be 1:20?”
When we got to the hotel (next entry) and were checking in, we both THOUGHT we overheard the desk clerk telling someone that they were on “Arizona-Pacific Time” but that is just so whacko we both must have misunderstood.
It was only after four days in Arizona (entries follow) when we left Arizona and were in Colorado that we got our answer: Arizona doesn’t do Daylight Savings. So when all the states in Mountain Time go on Daylight Savings Time, they jump forward an hour. Arizona doesn’t. So that makes Arizona on Pacific time, one little island of Pacific Coast Time in the middle of all the Mountain Daylight Time States.
To make it all just a little crazier, there is a huge amount of land in Arizona that is the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation observes Daylight Savings Time.
Weird.
Florida Ranks #1 in the Nation for Identity Theft and Fraud; Pensacola #10 Beauty-Obsessed City in US
Just yesterday, I gasped when I learned that Time Magazine ranked Pensacola of all the cities in the USA, #10 in “Obsession with Beauty” as measured by internet access to sites for buying make-up and cosmetics at sites like Sephora and Ulta. New York and Miami didn’t make the list.
Then I understood. We don’t have a Sephora in Pensacola. We don’t have an Ulta. To get specialized make-ups like Urban Decay, you go online, to Sephora. Yep. Guilty. But it must take a lot of Pensacolians buying a lot of make-up online to make us #10 of all the beauty-obsessed cities in the USA.
Rape Victim Commits Suicide After Being Forced to Marry Rapist
Aon AOL-Huffpost:
Amina Filali, Morocco Rape Victim, Commits Suicide After Forced Marriage To Rapist
By PAUL SCHEMM
RABAT, Morocco — The case of a 16-year-old girl who killed herself after she was forced to marry her rapist has spurred outrage among Morocco’s internet activists and calls for changes to the country’s laws.
An online petition, a Facebook page and countless tweets expressed horror over the suicide of Amina Filali, who swallowed rat poison on Saturday to protest her marriage to the man who raped her a year earlier.
Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code allows for the “kidnapper” of a minor to marry his victim to escape prosecution, and it has been used to justify a traditional practice of making a rapist marry his victim to preserve the honor of the woman’s family.
“Amina, 16, was triply violated, by her rapist, by tradition and by Article 475 of the Moroccan law,” tweeted activist Abadila Maaelaynine.
Abdelaziz Nouaydi, who runs the Adala Assocation for legal reform, said a judge can recommend marriage only in the case of agreement by the victim and both families.
“It is not something that happens a great deal – it is very rare,” he said, but admitted that the family of the victim sometimes agrees out of fear that she won’t be able to find a husband if it is known she was raped.
The marriage is then pushed on the victim by the families to avoid scandal, said Fouzia Assouli, president of Democratic League for Women’s Rights.
“It is unfortunately a recurring phenomenon,” she said.”We have been asking for years for the cancellation of Article 475 of the penal code which allows the rapist to escape justice.”
The victim’s father said in an interview with an online Moroccan newspaper that it was the court officials who suggested from the beginning the marriage option when they reported the rape.
“The prosecutor advised my daughter to marry, he said ‘go and make the marriage contract,'” said Lahcen Filali in an interview that appeared on goud.ma Tuesday night.
In many societies, the loss of a woman’s virginity outside of wedlock is a huge stain of honor on the family.
In many parts of the Middle East, there is a tradition whereby a rapist can escape prosecution if he marries his victim, thereby restoring her honor. There is a similar injunction in the Old Testament’s Book of Deuteronomy
Morocco updated its family code in 2004 in a landmark improvement of the situation of women, but activists say there’s still room for improvement.
In cases of rape, the burden of proof is often on the victim and if she can’t prove she was attacked, a woman risks being prosecuted for debauchery.
“In Morocco, the law protects public morality but not the individual,” said Assouli, adding that legislation outlawing all forms of violence against women, including rape within marriage, has been stuck in the government since 2006.
According to the father’s interview, the girl was accosted on the street and raped when she was 15, but it was two months before she told her parents.
He said the court pushed the marriage, even though the perpetrator initially refused. He only consented when faced with prosecution. The penalty for rape is between five and 10 years in prison, but rises to 10 to 20 in the case of a minor.
Filali said Amina complained to her mother that her husband was beating her repeatedly during the five months of marriage but that her mother counseled patience.
A Facebook page called “We are all Amina Filali” has been formed and an online petition calling for Morocco to end the practice of marrying rapists and their victims has already gathered more than 1,000 signatures.
Scanning Obituaries
Who knew? I certainly didn’t, and yet I find that I’m not alone. AdventureMan does it, too, and other friends. One friend says she thinks she scans the obituaries to celebrate the fact that she is still alive. That may be it for most of us, but in addition, I find that there are people living among us with amazing histories, and we don’t even know. Sometimes when you read an obit, you can tell that the person wrote it himself or herself, and what that person considered important in his/her life. Sometimes the obituary is not very loving.
Southern newspapers, in my experience, are much richer in extraordinary detail that newspapers in bigger cities, like Seattle. In bigger cities, only the rich and famous or notorious get much space; it may be that the space is far more expensive in the bigger cities, or that families are less willing to shell out from the estate for the bigger coverage. Southerners value family, and history; it’s a part of the culture.
Yesterday, when I took the Pensacola News Journal in to AdventureMan, I had circled something in one of the obituaries, knowing that he, like me, only reads them now and then. I didn’t want him to miss this line:
(Name) was a Past Mighty Chosen One of the Zelica Daughters of Mokanna, Ladies Auxiliary to the Grotto.
Holy smokes! I thought it might be one of the Mardi Gras Krewe things, but AdventureMan googled, and discovered that is a Masonic offshoot, and their larger groups are called Cauldrons. (!)
In America of the early 1900’s, social affiliation groups were important. People belonged to religious groups like Knights of Columbus, Ladies of the Church, etc, quasi-religious groups like Masons and Shriners, and social groups like the Elks and Moose and Lions Club. Some groups still exist, and are still going strong, like Rotary Club, and special interest groups. In Pensacola, there is a Tea Party AND a Coffee Party. There is a Philipino-American Republican Club. When people gather together regularly to share something in common, they can form a group. All of these groups help people be connected in their communities and in their lives, and help people to look after one another.
I belonged to a group once that called ourselves the Aqua-Babes. To be perfectly honest, we might not be total babes, but hey – it’s our group, we can call ourselves what we want, right?
But oh, my, to be a Mighty Chosen One . . .
Houston CC: Qatar Unable to Credit Coursework?
TThe western universities in Qatar have fought long and hard to have accountability and enforced standards . . . and there are always challenges. Here is a hilarious article about one such newer university facing significant challenges (thanks, John! )
Faulty planning may be to blame for HCC Qatar campus’s problems
By Jeannie Kever, Houston Chronicle
Updated 09:01Â p.m., Saturday, February 4, 2012
As top officials at Houston Community College were collecting awards and publishing papers about their international ventures last year, their effort in Qatar was struggling with disagreements over accreditation, high faculty turnover and growing worries that the dean hired by the Qataris to lead the effort was working against them.
The problems, detailed in emails and internal documents obtained through a public records request, raise questions about whether HCC was prepared for the ambitious foreign undertaking.
The dean chosen by the Qatari government was replaced in November by a veteran HCC employee, Butch Herrod, as part of an administrative overhaul. Enrollment has reached 750 students, less than two years after HCC signed an agreement with the Qatari government to create that nation’s first community college.
But students have not received HCC credits for their classes there – a cornerstone of the promises made when the partnership was announced – and for now it appears unlikely their coursework will transfer to the six U.S. universities with operations in Qatar. After months of student protests, a deal signed last month will allow graduates of the new community college to enroll in Qatar University.
Things were so bad last spring an HCC administrator in Qatar wrote HCC Chancellor Mary Spangler that Community College of Qatar, or CCQ, had become known as “the Crazy College of Qatar.”
From the beginning, Spangler said the Qatar contract was a way to earn money as state funding dropped and property tax revenues remained flat. HCC records indicate the college has collected $640,034 from the deal; it projects a profit of $4.6 million by 2015, slightly more than expected.
Deputy Chancellor Art Tyler said in a recent interview that things now are running smoothly, and that misunderstandings are unavoidable in any international operation.
“The world is not exactly flat,” he said. “It may have gotten smaller over the years, thanks to technology, but when you’re dealing with people, with communities, you can’t know everything.”
Women taught separately
Among the things HCC didn’t know until just before classes began in September 2010: The Qatari government decided male and female students would be educated separately, contrary to the five-year, $45 million contract, which called for coeducational classes.
Former employees say that was just one of the surprises when they arrived in Qatar, ranging from delays in getting textbooks to worries over their exit visas.
“Things did not go smoothly at all,” said Randi Perlman, hired to teach English to Arabic-speaking students. “There were a lot of issues that came up … that I think didn’t need to happen.”
Overseas campuses
With more than 70,000 students, HCC is one of the nation’s largest community college systems, offering lower division academic classes and workforce training.
Over the past decade, it has become increasingly involved in international ventures, as well, with projects in Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Qatar.
Tyler said Qatar, located on the Persian Gulf, is a natural match for a Houston institution: energy industry ties, Qatar Airlines’ nonstop flights and the presence of the Qatar Consulate here. Six U.S. universities have campuses there, including Texas A&M.
The Methodist Hospital System has an office in the United Arab Emirates and is helping to build an ambulatory care center in the capital city of Doha.
Visa requirement
The first wave of HCC faculty and staff discovered after being hired – in some cases, after arriving in Doha – that their visas required them to get permission before leaving the country.
“That seemed to me to be a human-rights violation,” said Jan McNeil, a veteran English teacher who had previously worked in Singapore.
HCC offered interviews with three employees who worked in Qatar last year, all of whom said the visas posed no problem.
David Ross, chairman of the English as a second language and English departments in Qatar, said the system worked but acknowledged the six-day window to use the visas made timing tricky and the lack of multiple exit visas – standard for U.S. employees of American universities and companies there – provoked anxiety.
Internal emails also detail delays in preparing apartments for the expatriate employees, paying tuition at schools for their children and complaints about spotty Internet service.
“That whole piece of helping faculty and staff feel at home … was a challenge,” Tyler said.
‘A matter of learning’
Perlman, who now teaches at Texas A&M in College Station, attributed many of the challenges to poor planning, including hiring administrators – many of whom transferred from Houston – without experience working in a foreign country.
“You need people on the ground there, to help you get things done,” said Perlman. “They didn’t have that.”
Mark Weichold, dean and CEO of Texas A&M’s Qatar campus and a member of an interim board appointed last fall to govern CCQ, said missteps are to be expected.
“Watching HCC help get the community college established, some of the bumps are similar to what I’ve seen the other branch campuses (in Qatar) experience,” he said. “It’s a matter of learning how to do things in a different part of the world.”
Little control at top
But former employees and internal documents suggest HCC’s biggest problem came from a contract that authorized the Qatari government to hire the school’s chief academic official, giving HCC little control over decisions at the top.
Judith Hansen was hired by Qatar’s Supreme Education Council and served as dean until late last year.
Tyler declined to discuss the circumstances that led to Hansen’s departure in November.
Hansen, who had been forced out of the president’s job at Southwestern Oregon Community College in 2008 following three no-confidence votes by faculty and staff groups, did not respond to requests for comment.
But she was at the center of disputes over accreditation and whether CCQ could change HCC’s curriculum or claim it as its own.
She insisted on independence in an email to Tyler last winter: “The request for no assistance with (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) accreditation means there is no need for HCC to be concerned about CCQ organizational chart,” she wrote.
‘Crazy College of Qatar’
Not so fast, Spangler said after Tyler passed on the message.
“We will not accept this response,” the HCC chancellor wrote to Tyler. “She is not calling the shots.”
Cheryl Sterling, an HCC administrator now in Qatar, wrote Tyler and Spangler last spring after Tyler acknowledged no HCC credit would be awarded for the spring 2011Â semester.
“If students do not receive HCC credits this Spring, we will have a major crisis (all out war),” she wrote. “The Dean has held several forums assuring them of credits. … we are known as CCQ, the Crazy College of Qatar.”
At about the same time, faculty members issued a “no confidence” vote against Hansen.
John Moretta, a faculty member now in Qatar, was in contact with Spangler before the vote.
“She avoids me because she knows … that I know what she is doing is in direct contravention of so many HCC policies,” he wrote of Hansen. “Should we proceed with the faculty-senate vote of no confidence? … Please advise.”
Spangler replied the same day.
“The short answer is yes, and we didn’t have this conversation,” she told him.
Canadian Family Found Guilt of Honor Killing
From today’s AOL / Huffington Post: World:
KINGSTON, Ontario — A jury on Sunday found an Afghan father, his wife and their son guilty of killing three teenage sisters and a co-wife in what the judge described as “cold-blooded, shameful murders” resulting from a “twisted concept of honor.”
The jury took 15 hours to find Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in a case that shocked and riveted Canadians from coast to coast. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
After the verdict was read, the three defendants again declared their innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia’s childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.
Their bodies were found June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home to Montreal from Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and going online. Shafia’s first wife was living with him and his second wife. The polygamous relationship, if revealed, could have resulted in their deportation.
The prosecution alleged it was a case of premeditated murder, staged to look like an accident after it was carried out. Prosecutors said the defendants drowned their victims elsewhere on the site, placed their bodies in the car and pushed it into the canal.
Defense lawyers said the deaths were accidental. They said the Nissan car accidentally plunged into the canal after the eldest daughter, Zainab, took it for a joy ride with her sisters and her father’s first wife. Hamed said he watched the accident, although he didn’t call police from the scene.
After the jury returned the verdicts, Mohammad Shafia, speaking through a translator, said, “We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn’t commit the murder and this is unjust.”
His weeping wife, Tooba, also declared the verdict unjust, saying, “I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother.”
Their son, Hamed, speaking in English said, “I did not drown my sisters anywhere.”
But Judge Robert Maranger was unmoved, saying the evidence clearly supported their conviction for “the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family.”
“It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime … the apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honor … that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.”
Hamed’s lawyer, Patrick McCann, said he was disappointed with the verdict, but said his client will appeal and he believes the other two defendants will as well.
But prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis welcomed the verdict.
“This jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances,” Laarhuis said outside court.
“This verdict sends a very clear message about our Canadian values and the core principles in a free and democratic society that all Canadians enjoy and even visitors to Canada enjoy,” he said to cheers of approval from onlookers.
The family had left Afghanistan in 1992 and lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai before settling in Canada in 2007. Shafia, a wealthy businessman, married Yahya because his first wife could not have children.
The prosecution painted a picture of a household controlled by a domineering Shafia, with Hamed keeping his sisters in line and doling out discipline when his father was away on frequent business trips to Dubai.
The months leading up to the deaths were not happy ones in the Shafia household, according to evidence presented at trial. Zainab, the oldest daughter, was forbidden to attend school for a year because she had a young Pakistani-Canadian boyfriend, and she fled to a shelter, terrified of her father, the court was told.
The prosecution said her parents found condoms in Sahar’s room as well as photos of her wearing short skirts and hugging her Christian boyfriend, a relationship she had kept secret. Geeti was becoming almost impossible to control: skipping school, failing classes, being sent home for wearing revealing clothes and stealing, while declaring to authority figures that she wanted to be placed in foster care, according to the prosecution.
Shafia’s first wife wrote in a diary that her husband beat her and “made life a torture,” while his second wife called her a servant.
The prosecution presented wire taps and cell phone records from the Shafia family in court to support their honor killing theory. The wiretaps, which capture Shafia spewing vitriol about his dead daughters, calling them treacherous and whores and invoking the devil to defecate on their graves, were a focal point of the trial.
“There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this,” Shafia said on one recording. “Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows … nothing is more dear to me than my honor.”
Defense lawyers argued that at no point in the intercepts do the accused say they drowned the victims.
Shafia’s lawyer, Peter Kemp, said after the verdicts that he believes the comments his client made on the wiretaps may have weighed more heavily on the jury’s minds than the physical evidence in the case.
“He wasn’t convicted for what he did,” Kemp said. “He was convicted for what he said.”
Deb Roy: The Birth of a Word
Come back when you have some time – you’ll need about twenty minutes to watch this TED video about communication. I love this – but then you know I am a word nerd, and I love the way concepts are born and grow.
Computers have aided language analysis and taken it to lengths that were previously inconceivable. First, Deb Roy shows – with videos, graphs and cloud analysis – how his son learned to speak his first word.
He goes from there to what I would call “buzz analysis”, taking program content from cable television and correlating it to comments on public media – blogs, FaceBook, all kinds of public forums. The results are astonishing, and a great tool to understand the national psyche and how we think and process. This is amazing stuff.
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