Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Thomas Jefferson's conjecture.....
"Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture that nature has been less bountiful to them [the blacks] in the endowment of the head, I believe than in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favor no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give reciprocation of right: that, without this, they are merely arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may not take a little from one, who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed, should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new nor peculiar to the color of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago."
P.149-150, NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA by Thomas Jefferson, "Query XIV" ( Penguin Classics, London: 1785, 1999)
MISSOURI'S PERVERSION OF DUE PROCESS
REFLECTIONS ON THE STATE'S PURPOSEFUL PERVERSION OF PROCESS @ MICHAEL BROWN
Getting caught up in the differing witnesses accounts and perspectives in the Michael Brown murder by Darren Wilson, the retired (now wealthy) Ferguson Police Officer, was not a grand jury function. Such factual ferreting is for resolution by a trial jury and judge, whose function is to find the facts from differing witness accounts, upon instructions from a judge, in the presence of opposing counsel and the rules of evidence.
The rules of evidence do not apply in grand jury proceedings. No judge is present, nor opposing counsel. Only the prosecutor's side is heard, as only that side may present evidence to, or charge the grand jury by statutory and common case law.
What is typically a very short, simple legal process was transmogrified by prosecutors in the Michael Brown killing into a 100-day saga, sodden by leaks, illegal tweaks--like giving the wrong "unlawful use of force" charging instructions--and like the unprecedented, 4 hour, would-be indicted-killer-defendant's testimony to that grand jury by his would-be prosecutors, as their 'witness' without cross examination, in secret.
The boy-killer's 'exoneration' for shooting an unarmed, 18-year old black boy, was engineered by the local prosecutors, by polluting the grand jury process with multiple infirmities and by slyly perverting justice.
The prosecutors must now pay for such purposeful perversities by the very process they have impugned.
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FERGUSON'S REVELATIONS
Those of us who have represented Missouri plaintiffs in civil rights litigation have long been frustrated by our clients' inevitable suspicion of us "selling them out", when, in fact, the case was just the opposite, we were the ones buoying them up, in the face of a fierce and unrelenting racism, worn smoothly subtle by its use. Eventually, such representation took its toll, as civil rights lawyers, sanctioned, disbarred, disabled, or dead, vilified, and impoverished, gave "up the ghost!"
Now it is plain, as day from the Michael Brown debacle, that racism is incentivized in American law; profitable to those who support its virulent presence and persistence, whether it be the killing of unarmed black boys or employment discrimination or any myriad other forms it may manifest.
This is why there is always a battle over federal judges; getting the smooth racists--those who don't look it or sound like it--but who do it; and the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, is controversial always because, whoever will be fair to blacks is not desired!
Thursday, November 27, 2014
insemination
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
ROBERT McCULLOUCH'S COMEUPPANCE: ABUSE OF DISCRETION
http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2578&context=ilj
Useful asset against St Louis County Prosecutor, Robert McCollouch, in quo warranto proceedings, or recall--from--office initiative, should such ever ensue, based upon his abuse of discretion and subornation of injustice, in utilizing the grand jury pretext to avoid charging Darren Wilson with the murder of Michael Brown, in default of his constitutional and/or statutory public duty, is this Indiana law review article, dealing with discretion in criminal prosecution, and its ramifications.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
THE RULE OF LAWLESSNESS
"We are a nation built on the rule of law, so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury's to make," Obama said. He said it was understandable that some Americans would be angered, but echoed Brown's parents in calling for peaceful protests.
And those laws deemed slaves to be 3/5s of a man, and free blacks even less. Those are the "laws" on which the nation was built, in which a black man had no rights--even to life--that a white man was bound to respect.
That is the legal infrastructure on which this nation's "rule of law," is built!
nothing but the money
NOTHING BUT THE MONEY
Money drives politics, whose duty it is to safeguard money's sources, privileges, and patrons from harm.
To this end money funds politics and politicians, who reciprocate in kind.
Obstacles are erected to protect money and its politicians from incursions from without and from intruders from within. One such obstacle is tariffs; other such are: taxes, laws, rules, regulations, and their professional enforcement regimes that are trained and hired to carry out money's commands.
To control, divide and befuddle the diverse masses, they promulgate myths and paradigms like white supremacy, black inferiority, the yellow peril, manifest destiny, the dirty Mexican, the Indian giver, and of course, American exceptionalism.
These are all layered to protect their money and to get your money, too!
All is directed to that end: the money: making it; keeping it; robbing and stealing it: legally if possible, illegally if necessary , while feigning fairness !
Buy what you need, not what you want, this Christmas and thereafter. Nothing but the money matters to them, not man, law, right or wrong.
Money props them up; money will bring them down. Once you were money, property; chattel not persons.
'The last shall be first and the first shall be last,' said the Bible. How? By and through dexterous monetary management by those on the bottom!
WHITE SUPREMACY STILL REIGNS IN AMERICAN COURTS
STATE COUNTY PROSECUTORS ARE GIVEN MORE POWER THAN THE STATE'S GOVERNOR OR ITS STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL IN MISSOURI, OVER CRIMES, BY THE MISSOURI LEGISLATURE. ROBERT MCCULLOUCH, ST. LOUIS COUNTY'S PROSECUTOR, COULD HAVE FILED CHARGES DIRECTLY AGAINST DARREN WILSON AND ORDERED HIS ARREST, WITHOUT ANY GRAND JURY. INSTEAD HE ENABLED WILSON TO TESTIFY 4 HOURS IN FRONT OF THE VERY GRAND JURY DETERMINING PROBABLE CAUSE QUESTIONS AGAINST HIM, EXTRAORDINARILY GRACIOUS INDEED, THIS WAS "IN YOUR FACE" INJUSTICE, DISRESPECT, AND CONTEMPT OF BLACKS IN FERGUSON, ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MISSOURI, AND THE U.S.A.
Monday, November 24, 2014
FROM FOOTBALL TO FARMING BY FAITH IN GOD
NEEDS VS. WANTS THIS CHRISTMAS
One way to instill or to redirect values in our children, grands, etc., is to ask: "What do you NEED for Christmas", rather than "What do you WANT for Christmas."
Needs are fewer than wants, always; less costly; more valuable; and sustainable.
A discussion around their needs and wants will likely ensue. That is good. It will enable you to distinguish "needs" from "wants", while explaining the true meaning of Christmas; distinguishing it from the crass commercialism that now overwhelms it.
MY CONFESSIONS
MY CONFESSIONS
The prevailing paradigm on this planet has been that of race: white, black, brown, yellow, red, epidermis.
Probably, that is because racist America is its predominant power.
Jesus' paradigm was not racist; instead, it was based upon personal righteousness. Under it, a person's exterior characteristics were less important that a person's inner virtues. Such he taught repeatedly in the Gospels, to dull-witted disciples.
Many in power purport and profess to be followers of Jesus Christ. But, in their works they are reprobate, and their hearts are far from him and his teachings. Instead, such ones find it provident, prudent, and profitable to hide behind Jesus Christ's teachings and example, all the better to exploit others with, to rule, and to control, subverting the Savior for self-gain.
I have chosen to follow Jesus in my calibration of human character and capability, not that of my native land.
As a consequence a person's or a people's commitment to love, truth, justice, wisdom, fairness, beauty, knowledge, virtue, and godliness--all inner characteristics--mean more to me than a person's or a people's commitment to race, religion, color, class, wealth, family, nationality, power, age: all such being outer, imposed, extrinsic determinants.
This is not to say that anything or anyone is meaningless, or any less.
It is to say that my personal scale is weighted by righteousness, and in that light, I view and assess all else.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
MARION S. BARRY. R.I.P.
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Marion_Barry…
Marion Barry was from Itta Bena, Mississippi, where he became an Eagle Scout; later he pursued a doctorate degree in chemistry from the University of Tennessee, after graduating LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, TN, with a Masters Degree from Fisk University, in Nashville, TN. He was also the first president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In short, he was nobody's fool or buffoon!
STERLING ALLEN BROWN
Saturday, November 22, 2014
MIRRORED PRESUMPTION
MICHAEL BROWN: TO PERSONALIZE, GENERALIZE, OR BOTH
Some people personalize. Other people generalize. A few do both. Only the dead do neither. Shared experiences affect us similarly, yet differently.
Michael Brown's killing and its sequel is a shared experience affecting us all. Whether to personalize, to generalize, or to do both, with respect to it, is an individual choice, depending on our prior experiences and feelings.
If personalized, it is Michael's Brown's and his family and friends' tragedy. If generalized, it is both that, and either a St. Louis or black people or U.S. or global tragedy. No one can remain unaffected in America nor in the world.
Due to social media, we are interconnected as never before instantly. Knowledge of such a horrific event affects us viscerally and subliminally, however we choose to display, or not to display, its impact, its affect on us.
Friday, November 21, 2014
DISINGENUOUS AND DECEITFUL
DISINGENUOUS AND DECEITFUL
"A prince must appear to be pious, but must never be," is a statement of Machiavelli's THE PRINCE, a classic of the Italian Renaissance era.
It means that outward forms of one's professions, must dissemble one's inner intentions in practical human affairs whether political or mundane.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, a noted jurist, said that the best judges had "too much good sense" to be bound by the product of a legal syllogism in determining legal outcomes in his THE COMMON LAW, a legal classic.
That means prevailing prejudices, customs, modes, and predicates should and must outweigh logical deductions from legal precedents.
They are saying the same thing, to the same audience, the haves; the vilified Machiavelli and the venerated Holmes are rationalizing the absolute desirability of hypocrisy to those with power, over honesty and openness.
The powerless, then, are too often left defenselessness with paradigms to which they alone vainly cling: religion and law, imposed by powerful people who are disingenuous and deceitful.
wind and wages
Gauging leadership on what one has said, rather than what someone has done, is like accepting warm wind for one's work instead of rightful wages.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
NATURAL GENESIS...KAFFIR
"If man and speech began with the black race, language will be sure to show it, without man having first, or directly dubbed himself the black. In Bambarra, 'Akafi' is the Negro. And the word for beginning is 'Kafulo.' Black is synonymous with first, 'Kak', whence 'Ka' and 'Kaf', later 'ap' 'af', and 'au'. Further in the Natal Zulu, the name for sorcery, charms, or enchantment is 'Kafula'. So, in the Xosa Kaffir, Isi 'Kafulo' denotes a charm or sorcery, black magic....the Inner African 'kaf ' for the black remains, from this I derived the name of the Kaffirs and of the Au-ruti (Af-ruti or Kaf-ruti) who went down into the valley of the Nile.--"Book of Beginnings" , vol. 1, p.28, 29."
P.284, note 1, THE NATURAL GENESIS by Gerald Massey (Black Classic Press, Baltimore, MD: 1883,1998)
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
UNCONSTITUTIONAL BURDENS OF PROOF
Unconstitutional burdens of proof
Far too long, the "burden of proof" has been placed upon each black person to show themselves worthy of the basic rights, privileges and immunities of American citizenship.
Worse yet, each has also borne the responsibility for the conduct and achievements of others in their race.
Neither such burden is bestowed upon the "white" citizens. They are bestowed all rights, privileges and immunities of American citizenship unconditionally and indiscriminately, without any racial imputation for the conduct or achievements of other white persons, unlike the blacks.
In short, each black person has historically borne a burden of proof for the whole race, and for each member thereof, while whites have had no like or similar burdens, being responsible for themselves alone.
The disparate and ludicrous nature of these ridiculously impossible "burdens of proof" that the black race' has had to assume, jointly and severally, on behalf of themselves, and on behalf of each individual member of the race is illustrated below, by this quoted excerpt:
"Inspired by wise and responsible leaders, the freedmen of the South were to effect a revolution from within. Once they proved themselves capable of high moral and intellectual achievements, honesty, self-restraint, integrity, thrift, economy, and enterprise, all the 'theories of inferiority 'would pass away into 'endless forgetfulness.' [Alexander] Crummell 's nationalism was a temporary detour or an indirect route to the goal of equal rights and integration into white society. What is needed, he explained, is that 'we should rise to such elevation that the people of this land be forced to forget all the facts and theories of race, when they behold our thorough equality with them, in all levels of activity and attainment, of culture and moral grandeur.'"
P.16, CIVILIZATION AND BLACK PROGRESS; SELECTED WRITINGS OF ALEXANDER CRUMMELL ON THE SOUTH, "Introduction," edited by J.R. Oldfield (University of Virginia Press:1995)
Alexander Crummell was a black Episcopal priest from New York, who studied in New England and at Cambridge; who lived for periods of years in England and in Liberia, where he pastored; and finally in Washington,D.C., where he also pastored, and founded the short-lived American Negro Academy, all within the fervent nineteenth century.
Whence this "burden of proof?" Was it imposed by whites or was it simply assumed by the blacks? What is its source? It is neither rational, sustainable or even attainable!
Whatever its provenance may be, it is certainly not in the U.S. Constitution!
THOMAS JEFFERSON'S REGNAL AND ORIGINAL AMERICAN RACISM
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/jefferson/ch14.html
THIS EXCERPT FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON'S 'NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA' , QUERY 14, DECLARES THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN RACISM EMPHATICALLY; ONE NEED LOOK NO FURTHER. JUSTICE TANEY, WHO WROTE THE INFAMOUS 'DRED SCOTT' DECISION' IN 1857, WAS A PIKER COMPARED TO JEFFERSON, WHO PUBLISHED THIS INCREMENTALLY WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS AND EMENDATIONS, STARTING IN 1785, THROUGH 1800, IN FRANCE, ENGLAND, AND IN THE UNITED STATES.
THIS IS JUST A SAMPLE, AMPLE--YES--THERE IS MUCH MUCH MORE. READ:
Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. -- To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious (* 1) experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch (* 2). Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. -- Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar ;oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and shew how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his stile is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived, and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy investigation.
HUMILITY
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
A RULER'S WORD IS POWER
A ruler's word is power be it wise or not
The word of a king or president is power and it is powerful unto itself.
Since the power of life and death resides in the tongue, in the tongue of one who reigns supreme, it is lethal!
This power is all-the-more reason to assure that the leader is wise.
A foolish leader will say anything; thereby, either prompting or prolonging impending disaster.
Fortunately, we now have a wise leader, in Obama, unlike his predecessor who was a foolish leader, Bush.
OBAMA'S two terms have primarily been spent undoing the economic and military destruction caused by the words and deeds of BUSH's two terms, both home and abroad, over the obstruction of Congress, which prefers shutting down government to compromising its all-or-none agenda.
History is unkind to the doctrinaire and to the destructive; so is Karma. A fool sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind, Hosea, 8:7; but wisdom is rewarded with joy and righteousness.
HOUSE OF CARDS LEGAL SYSTEM
A 'house of cards' is any legal system based on "stare decisis;" that is, on prior decisions by other jurists, like our own self-derived version of the common law of England; rather than upon the more rigorously exacting, objective, geometric and spiritual principles which have withstood the ravages of time, turmoil, and man!
Such a system of justice is shaky like its mutable foundation, the house of cards that it is, and was, built upon. We deserve and can do much better!
Injustice compounded is not justice.
Monday, November 17, 2014
DO FELONS HAVE A RIGHT TO LIFE UNDER THE U.S. CONSTITUTION?
Several very interesting legal issues are framed by this post below: Whether the legal prohibition against felons possessing firearms applies where the black felon's own life is at imminent risk of termination by an outraged white police officer whom he has just beat up, and whose gun he has taken and fled with from fear? Is not the 2nd Amendment's right to bear arms, the 13th Amendment's abolition of slavery and the 14th Amendment's equal treatment under law all thereby implicated/offended?
Do felons have a right to life, and to protect their lives from abuses of vengeful state power? Or must they humbly submit to their own homicide?
http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/27394957/man-charged-in-allegedly-racially-motivated-beating-of-chicago-police-sergeant
Sunday, November 16, 2014
ST. PETER'S CATHEDRAL AND MARK TWAIN
"[C]lose by them, in unimpaired strength, is a drain of arched and heavy masonry that belongs to an older city which stood here before Romulus and Remus were born or Rome thought of. The Appian Way is here yet, and looking much as it did, perhaps, when the triumphal processions of the Emperors moved over it in other days bringing fettered princes from the confines of the earth. We cannot see the long array of chariots and mail-clad men laden with spoils of conquest, but we can imagine the pageant, after a fashion. We look out out upon many objects of interest from the dome of St. Peter's; and last of all, almost at our feet, our eyes rest upon the building which was once the Inquisition. How times changed, between the older ages and the new! Some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago, the ignorant men of Rome were wont to put Christians in the arena of the Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild beast upon them for a show. It was for a lesson as well. It was to teach the people to abhor and fear the new doctrine the followers of Christ were teaching. The beast tore the victims limb from limb and made poor mangled corpses of them in the twinkling of an eye. But when the Christians came into power, when the holy Mother became mistress of the barbarians, she taught them the error of their ways by no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer , who was so gentle and so merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians to love him; and they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor him--first by twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their flesh with pincers--red-hot ones because they were the most comfortable in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by roasting them in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The true religion , properly administered, as the good Mother Church used to administer it, is very, very soothing . It is wonderfully persuasive, also. There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened, civilized people. It is a great pity the playful Inquisition is no more."
P. 216-217, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD by Mark Twain (Library of America, NY: 1984)
JIGSAW PUZZLE OF LIFE
Saturday, November 15, 2014
UNKNOWN IN HIS NATIVE LAND, LEONARDO PISANO, LEGENDARY MATHEMATICAL MAN
http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_10_02.html
That Keith Devlin, "The Math Guy" on National Public Radio, could barely, and only with greatest difficulty, find any recognition whatsoever of Leonardo Pisano in 2002, Pisa, Italy, the eminent mathematical author of LIBER ABACI's homeland, is hardly surprising. That city's tourism office was even ignorant of this sage's existence, much less of any statue of him!
I was surprised to note that the great and keenly observant author, Mark Twain in his epic, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, does not mention him at all, when he, and his fellow American 'pilgrims', also visited Pisa in the 1850s! Pisano's "The Book of Computation", apart only from the Bible, may very well be THE most important ever written in western civilization. It is where our numerical system comes from, and our algebra, algorithms, geometry.
This book brought Hindu-Arabic numerals, symbols, geometry,and algebra from Africa and the Mediterranean region to Europe, via Italy, in 1202, when it was first published. Prior to his encyclopedic treatment of this extremely vital subject, block-Roman numerals were still in use in Europe.
Leonardo Pisano a/k/a "Fibonnaci" "was instructed as a youth in Bugia, a trading enclave established by the city of Pisa and located on the Barbary Coast of Africa in the Western Muslim Empire (present day Algeria). He continued to develop as a mathematician by traveling on business and studying in such places as Egypt, Syria, Provence (southeastern France) and Byzantium (Istanbul, Turkey). He developed contacts with scientists throughout the Mediterranean world. He became proficient in Euclid's 'ELEMENTS' and the Greek mathematical method of definition, theorem and proof. He learned from the Arabic scientists the Hindu numbers and their place system, and the algorithms for the arithmetic operations. He also learned the method of algebra principally found in the work of al-Kwarizmi. Through his study and travel and learned disputations with world scientists, he became a very superior creative mathematician. He participated in the academic court of Frederick II (of the Holy Roman Empire) who sought out and recognized great scholars of the thirteenth century. Leonardo with his scientific knowledge saw clearly the advantages of the useful mathematics known to the Muslim scientists, principally their Hindu numerals, and decimal place system, their calculating algorithms, and their algebra.....Leonardo resolved to write...'LIBER ABACI' to bring to the Italian people the world's best mathematics in a usable form."
p.1, FIBONACCI'S LIBER ABACI: LEONARDO PISANSO'S 'BOOK OF CALCULATION' translation into modern English by Laurence Sigler (deceased) (Springer-Verlag, NY, Berlin: 1202, 2003)
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COUNTRY SIDITTY GHETTO AND ME
COUNTRY, SIDITTY, GHETTO, AND ME
Being called "country" is an insult. It implies backwardness and lack of worldliness. Yet, most of this country's population and the world's was once "country" or rural or rustic. But, as people moved to urban areas, cities, from the farms, due to labor shortages, educational advantages, and socialization preferences, so did "siditty."
No one is more zealous than the newly converted, nor more self-righteous! Such persons are siditty saints. "Siditty" is pretensiousness, snobbishness,stuck-up. Likewise, newly-arrived city residents are among the most siditty of its citizens.
http://zh.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=siditty
When I first moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1976, I was surprised to note that these residents referred to their twin-city neighbors of Kansas City, Kansas, as "country." Coming from Howard University, in Washington, D.C., I could not distinguish them from each other unless they told me! Of course, "Siditty" was an art form in D.C., or if you prefer, "Washington," particularly among our people, who had all kinds of distinctions among themselves, based on irrelevant characteristics.
"Sidittily" was also how St. Louis, Missourians, where I grew up, viewed East St. Louis, Illinoisans, just across the Mississippi River and fearfully, with trepidation,
Well, I too am country in inclination and disposition. I just read widely, and inquire deeply, which distinguishes me from those who do neither. And I am not ashamed.
Of course, the opposite of "country" is "ghetto," That I will never be. Praise God!
Friday, November 14, 2014
hip-hype
'WHITENESS' SPAWNED 'HERRENVOLK'
"Whiteness" --later known as Adolph Hitler's master race ideology--'Herrenvolk '--originated here, in America, before the "Declaration of Independence," and through it, as a political, economic, and military, foil and expedient in the 1660-1680s, due to the ever-larger and ambitious African indentured servant presence, relative to Scots, Irish, Welsh, English, and others; principally to thwart and to confound the United Kingdom's evolving abolitionist aspirations for its very competitive mercantile colony, that was growing richer and richer on its own lucrative ventures into the slave trade, shipping, insurance, banking, and manufactures, says Thomas Jefferson's NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA and Gerald Horne's THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION OF 1776.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
'WHITE RACISM' DEFINED
Racism is prejudice applied to black people by white people in life application situations. historically, to deny legal rights, privileges and immunities in every societal sector, beyond that defined for blacks. Racism is also mental and spiritual, involving the propagation of lies and mythology around that racism paradigm--of both blackness and whiteness-- to absolve whites and to brainwash/discourage blacks.
connected computers, connected minds
If computers connected in cyberspace for a common purpose can do great things, then human minds connected in cyberspace for a common purpose can do ever greater things, since the human mind produced the computer and its peripherals. http://www.ask.com/wiki/Computer_network?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF INFINITE CELESTIAL PROPULSION?
Why do our rockets, satellites, landers, and capsules all need propulsion systems, of some kind, while comets, meteors, asteroids, planets, moons, stars, appear not to need any kind of propulsion system whatsoever?
What power, presence, or force is enabling the heavenly bodies' persistent, orbital, continuous, super-fast and predictable motions in the sky?
Why can't we access it, whatever it is?
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
quiet consistency and bold audacity
HOLY ISLAND PHILAE OF THE NILE
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Philae?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
As the rocket probe, "Philae" from its mothership, "Rosetta," approaches its fateful rendezvous, in minutes, with a comet in outer space, it would be well to learn of the holy and original Philae Island in the Nile River, dividing Egypt from Ethiopia,at the 1st cataract. Dedicated to Osiris, Isis, Horus, and Hathor, eons ago prior to invasions by successive imperialists from the Greeks to the Romans to the early Christians to the Western Europeans to Turks to Arabs and Muslims, after Africa's fall. Britain's Aswan Dam flooded it in 1902. Scavengers and antiquaries looted it.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
PHILAE REDUX
http://news.discovery.com/space/asteroids-meteors-meteorites/first-time-comet-landing-no-sure-bet-141111.htm?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dnewsnewsletter#mkcpgn=emnws1
'PHILAE," the name of the European Space Agency probe expected to land on this comet, was also the name of the sacred island in Upper Egypt in the middle of the Nile River , where the final Egyptian priest who was able to read the hieroglyphics, was murdered by Christians to facilitate the spread of its religion, according to the book, STOLEN LEGACY, by George G.M. James. "ROSETTA," the comet probe's mothership is name of the famous stone, deciphered by Champollion, of France in 1822, containing hieroglyphic, Greek, and Demotic inscriptions; enabling him to crack the hieroglyphic code, after its absence of almost 2,000 years. How paradoxical!