If you’re used to think of a master plan in a terrible car,
you can call it a “think tank”.
That’s another lesson from Dante Ross‘ Hip Hop History 101.
This one takes place between 112th St. and Broadway.
Words of wisdom !

Courtesy of Dante Ross

Carrotmobs, Jujutsu and Advocacy

Mike Smith led us this week with an excellent account of his experience in grass roots organizing during the Obama presidential campaign. More importantly — and if we listened well — he discussed how we might learn lessons from the campaign for future political advocacy whether that advocacy revolves around an election or the promotion of specific issues.

One of the key takeaways is to embrace potential allies and enable them to pursue their own online messaging in support of the issue at hand. This necessitates a relinquishing of top down control, and relinquishing such control is something many struggle with throughout all industries be they corporations, advocacy organizations, political campaigns or community organizers.

At issue, of course, is the actual message. What is it? How is it said and how is it presented? This is a classic case of who controls the messenger. In the parlance of the day, are there mechanisms to prevent others from going rogue? Or is that just the cost of doing business in the digital age?

The answer is not simple and the conversation about the answer is quite long. If we cut to the short of it though the answer is yes, no matter the vertical we need to give up our attempts to control every aspect of a brand or message and instead realize that we are a participant in an ever evolving conversation about it.

JUMP to read the rest of the post.

Barrack Obama is an enigma to many who believe America is a great country.  Here is a man who was the son of an immigrant father from Africa and a broken family of average means.  Still, he was able to attend America’s finest schools and ultimately became president of the United States.  His Cinderella success conflicts with the President’s message that so often apologizes for America’s sins.

In trying to reconcile the conflict between Obama’s success and his Leftist views, I look to his past for answers.  Yet, little history has been publicized about the man’s past with the exception of the President’s own writings.  The so-called “independent press” has done little to research the man and his upbringing so we are forced to create conclusions based on information from less formidable sources.  Where are the interviews of his relatives?  Where are the interviews with classmates?  Where is the research as to whether he attended classes while in collage?  The questions are many, the answers are few.

An email is circulating with comments from fellow Columbia graduate, Wayne Allyn Root, who was also a Political Science major at the University and graduated during the same year as Obama.  I post the entire email below.  Root claims that neither he nor his classmates knew of Obama at Columbia.  Similar stories have gained traction because of the lack of follow-up by the press.  To study Root’s claim I went to the Left-leaning mediamattersaction.org for its fact checking.  Their response, posted below, answers few questions and in fact offers credibility to Root’s claims.  The following statements come from MediaMatters website:

• “If Obama’s classmates don’t remember him, it might be because he only attended Columbia for two years before graduating.  At Columbia, he lived off-campus.  He also spent most of his time studying.  ‘Mostly, my years at Columbia were an intense period of study,’ Obama told Columbia College Today in 2005.” This confirms Root’s contention that folks who attended Columbia do not recall Obama.
• “Moreover, one of Obama’s professors at Columbia remembers him well.  Michael Baron told the New York Times that he wrote Obama a recommendation for law school.” Finding one person at Columbia who remembers Obama shows he attended the University, but tells nothing about the man.
• “Finally, it should be noted that the source of this rumor is Wayne Allyn Root, who was the Libertarian nominee for Vice President.  …….. Root has political motivation to try to make Obama look bad.” This comment holds for any politician.  However, it does not refute the claim.

Mediamattersaction.org concludes by saying: “Hopefully, this will help clear up your concerns.”  I leave it to each reader to determine if this clears up anything.  But, for me it raises more questions.

There are many unanswered questions about Barrack Obama that should be known for any important public figure.  This void exists because the press has not asked the questions nor attempted to locate answers.  It also exists because the President’s handlers have kept many areas of the President’s background in the dark.  Because of this void it is left to the blog-o-sphere to make educated suppositions.  That is too bad for our democracy.  It does not meet the transparency the President promised during the campaign.

Original Email with Root’s Comments

From: XXXXXX@gmail.com

To:XXXXXX@hotmail.com

Subject: Fwd: Evidence of Obama’s past

Looking for evidence of Obama’s past, Fox News contacted 400 Columbia University students from the period when Obama claims to have been there, but none remembered him.

Wayne Allyn Root was, like Obama, a political science major at Columbia who also graduated in 1983. In 2008, Root says of Obama, “I don’t know a single person at Columbia that knew him, and they all know me.

I don’t have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia. Ever!  Nobody recalls him. I’m not exaggerating, I’m not kidding.” Root adds that he was also, like Obama, “Class of ‘83 political science, pre-law” and says, “You don’t get more exact or closer than that. Never met him in my life, don’t know anyone who ever met him.

At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me.

No one ever heard of Barack! And five years ago, nobody even knew who he was. The guy who writes the class notes, who’s kind of the, as we say in New York, the macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him. Is that not strange?

It’s very strange..” Obama’s photograph does not appear in the school’s yearbook and Obama consistently declines requests to talk about his years at Columbia, provide school records, or provide the name of any former classmates or friends while at Columbia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Allyn_Root#column-one

NOTE: Root graduated as Valedictorian from his high school, Thornton-Donovan School, then graduated from Columbia University in 1983 as a Political Science major (in the same class as President Barack Obama WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN IN)

Pass to all your Email friends.

Fact Check from Mediamattersaction.org

Hey there, thanks for passing this along.

My first reaction to this email was that this is just another crazy Internet rumor.  I mean, if President Obama didn’t really go to Columbia, wouldn’t it have come out during the campaign? So I did a little research and here’s what I found.

If Obama’s classmates don’t remember him, it might be because he only attended Columbia for two years before graduating.  He transferred from Occidental College in California before his junior year.  At Columbia, he lived off-campus.  He also spent most of his time studying.  “Mostly, my years at Columbia were an intense period of study,” Obama told Columbia College Today in 2005. “When I transferred, I decided to buckle down and get serious. I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk.“  Read the whole thing here:http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/jan05/cover.php

Moreover, one of Obama’s professors at Columbia remembers him well.  Michael Baron told the New York Times that he wrote Obama a recommendation for law school.  (In the same interview, Baron inadvertently fueled another Internet rumor about Obama’s “fake thesis.”)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/26/blog-posting/obamas-columbia-thesis-all-fiction-dreamed-blogger/

Finally, it should be noted that the source of this rumor is Wayne Allyn Root, who was the Libertarian nominee for Vice President.  He made similar claims in an interview with Reason magazine, saying that “maybe” Obama “was involved in some sort of black radical politics.” Clearly, Root has political motivation to try to make Obama look bad. http://reason.com/archives/2008/09/05/wayne-allyn-roots-million-doll/

Hopefully, this will help clear up your concerns.  If anybody sends you another email like this, make sure you get the facts before sending it to more people.  That way people won’t get all worked up over nothing.

Talk to you soon.

–Media Matters Action Network

NEW YORK (WJC)–Anti-Israel and pro-Iranian lecturers received hundreds of thousands of dollars from an Islamic charity in New York believed to be a front for the Iranian regime, the ‘New York Post’ reports.

The Alavi Foundation reportedly supported Middle Eastern and Persian studies programs of Columbia University in New York and Rutgers University in New Jersey, which employ professors sympathetic to the Iranian regime. In one of the donations, US$ 100,000 was transferred to Columbia University. A spokesman for the prestigious university said the school was surprised the Alavi Foundation had direct ties to the Iranian government.
 
The newspaper also reports that between 2005 and 2007, the foundation had donated over US$ 250,000 to Rutgers University’s Middle Eastern studies department headed by Hooshang Amirahmadi an academic who also heads the American Iranian Council and views Hezbollah and Hamas as legitimate organizations.
 
In recent weeks, US authorities raided institutions owned by the Alavi Foundation in New York, Maryland and California and filed a request for the seizure of its assets. This followed suspicions of money laundering. If the foreclosure is executed, it would be the largest in American history and would include the bank accounts of Islamic centers including schools and mosques throughout the United States.

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

(Audrey) Today I did something truly scary—I got dental work done in India. It’s not such an outlandish idea as it used to be, what with medical tourism, and all. Still something about the pairing of drills-fillings-teeth and the third world doesn’t put me instantly at ease. But I’ve had awful dental care for the past 4 years, courtesy of a to-remain-unnamed University who only provides dental care through their dental school, so I needed a check-up with a real, licensed dentist desperately.

One of the advantages of living in India is that whereas I can only afford the worst in New York I can afford the best here. And so I went to arguably the best dentist in Delhi, Dr. Mehta, personally recommended. Located in posh Vasant Vihar (an area of Delhi where I can’t afford to live it’s so ritzy), the office made a good impression from the get-go.

Really the outside looks more like you’re in Japan than in India. Even the street cows and dogs seemed to know to stay away from the office entrance. The waiting room was also lovely, spic and span, and the magazines were even up to date!

Within 5 minutes of arriving at the office I was in the dentist check-up chair, speaking with the dentist himself. He looked at my mouth for a few minutes and then proceeded to tell me the history of my orthodontist work (there’s 7+ years of history there, so it’s quite a story all in all). He quickly diagnosed that I had no cavities and then instructed one of his assistants to give me a deep cleaning. 40 minutes flat and I was out of there, with way cleaner teeth than the “in-training dentists” at this unnamed University (hello Columbia!) have ever gotten them. Here’s a shot of the dentist’s office. Anybody who has ever dealt with sub-par dental care in New York will greatly appreciate how clean and modern this place is.

All in all I was very impressed. The visit wasn’t cheap–about 60 USD all in all, for a cleaning and x-rays. But it’s solid work from a knowledgeable dentist that I trust. Oh, and did I mention that I made this appointment less than 72 hours ago? In New York, I have to call 3 months in advance, minimum. Oh, the better sides of India.

Yellow fin tuna (Thunnus albacares) and short-beaked common dolphin in a diorama of the eastern tropical Pacific at the AMNH's Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Live. (Image/R. Mickens/AMNH)

Next time you head out to your favorite sushi restaurant, you might want to think twice about ordering the tuna. There’s a good chance the fish on your plate could be an endangered species.

A new study by the American Museum of Natural History conducted DNA investigations on tuna at restaurants in New York City and Denver and found that nearly 30 percent of the tuna tested was actually endangered bluefin, and less than half of that was labeled as such.

A single bluefin tuna can sell for tens of thousands of dollars at market, a popular draw for the fishing industry. But that popularity comes with a price. Western stocks of northern bluefin tuna now hover around 10 percent of their “pre-exploitation” numbers. And last October, the country of Monaco nominated northern bluefin tuna for a listing under a complete international trade ban by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), according to a press release.

The serving up of a critically endangered fish is not necessarily on the shoulders of the restaurants. They might not know they’re doing it, just as consumers might not know they’re eating it. This is because the eight species of tuna are so genetically similar – closer than humans are to chimpanzees – that even with DNA testing, it’s hard to distinguish the difference, and once tuna arrives to the U.S. market, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved marketing label is simply “tuna.” A new and improved method of genetic detective work just might help change all that.

“When you eat sushi, you can unknowingly get a critically endangered species on your plate,” says Jacob Lowenstein, a graduate student affiliated with the Museum and Columbia University in the press release. “But with an increasingly popular technique, DNA barcoding, it is a simple process for researchers to see just what species are eaten at a sushi bar.”

DNA barcoding can be used to identify what animal became which product, even down to the origin of a leather handbag, according to the press release. In the case of the bluefin tuna, DNA barcoding defines a genetic key of 14 nucleotides exclusive enough to identify whether the tuna being served is bluefin. A similar method has been used to identify endangered whales on the Asian market and wildlife being sold in the African bushmeat trade.

With any luck, researchers will develop a handheld barcoding machine that can be used to identify fish on-site.

This study can be found in the current issue of PLoS ONE.

Ocean Beyond Carbon Cap

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091119/wl_time/08599194039100

The swine flu vaccine has been in short supply nationwide because of manufacturing delays, resulting in long lines at clinics and patients being turned away at doctor’s offices.

Goldman and Citi have the H1N1 flu vaccine amid a shortage.

Wall Street bankers once again are the target of populist outrage, this time over the news that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and others are receiving limited doses of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine.

Following a story on BusinessWeek.com, and its subsequent pickup on NBC’s Today Show and other media outlets, politicians, lobbyists, and bloggers launched blistering attacks against New York City health officials, the White House, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and, of course, the “fat cat bankers” themselves.

Other big New York City employers that have received doses of the vaccine include Columbia University, Time Inc., and the Federal Reserve Bank.

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington, a D.C.-based watchdog, is asking Obama’s Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to investigate why the CDC approved the distribution of the H1N1 vaccine to Wall Street firms. “In what world do Wall Street employees deserve to be vaccinated ahead of high-risk children, pregnant women, and health-care workers?” said executive director Melanie Sloan in a statement on Nov. 5. “Unfortunately, for the thousands being turned away in clinics across America, the CDC has decided to prioritize the millionaires over the masses.“

Representative Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) also criticized the Obama Administration’s distribution approach. “While many Missourians are still at risk, Wall Street bankers are at the head of the line for H1N1 vaccine,” said Blunt

Calgary Hockey Team And Players’ Families Privately Received H1N1 Vaccinations

An unidentified Alberta health care worker who allowed the Calgary Flames hockey team and players’ families to privately receive H1N1 vaccinations last week has been fired, Alberta Health Services announced this afternoon.

“The decision to allow preferential access to the Flames and their families was a serious error in judgment on the part of the staff involved,” Stephen Duckett, who is president and chief executive officer of the board that governs health delivery in the province, said in a statement.

Acercándonos en el cáncer
Por Abigail Klein Leichman
12 de noviembre 2009

Dra. Malka Cohen

La sustancia puede llegar a ser la tan buscada “santo grial” en el campo más amplio de tratamiento del cáncer. Por ahora, es prometedor como un arma específica contra el cáncer de mama.

La Prof. Malka Cohen-Armon, bioquímica de la Universidad de Tel Aviv, dice a ISRAEL21c, que el compuesto es un componente de una familia de fármacos desarrollados hace 10 años para preservar las células nerviosas atacadas por un golpe o inflamación. Pero el estudio mostró además que los medicamentos eran inapropiados para el uso previsto, y que fueron puestos en libertad sólo para fines de investigación.

Cohen-Armon y su equipo de investigadores comenzó a trabajar con los medicamentos para estudiar cómo afectaba el compuesto a la transmisión de señales en el núcleo de las células. Su objetivo era encontrar un método para reparar el ADN. Su efecto en las células de cáncer fue un inesperado y potencialmente enorme descubrimiento.

“Encontramos que en cierto modo esos medicamentos activaban un mecanismo en las células de cáncer que causaban su muerte en 48 a 72 horas sin dañar el tejido normal”, explica Cohen-Armon, profesora del Instituto Neufeld de Investigación Cardiaca de TAU Sackler School of Medicine. “De hecho, las células normales siguen proliferando, incluso en la presencia de la droga”.

En experimentos con ratones hembras, el compuesto fue inyectado con varios tipos de tejido canceroso, en particular, las células del cáncer de mama. Cohen-Armon se sorprendió al descubrir que la sustancia suspende la división celular, tanto en las células cancerosas y las normales del cuerpo -, pero al mismo tiempo nunca recupera las células cancerosas, las células normales vuelven a su actividad en 12 horas.

Las células normales se recuperan 12 horas después .

“Si hubiéramos tratado de buscar una droga que hiciera esto, nos habría tomado mucho tiempo”, dice Cohen-Armon, cuyos últimos hallazgos aparecen en la edición actual del diario internacional revisado por colegas Diario Oficial de Investigación sobre el Cáncer de Mama.

Las aplicaciones potenciales de las drogas de ese tipo son enormes, admite Cohen. Hoy en día, sólo en los EE.UU., alrededor de 1,3 millones de mujeres son diagnosticadas con cáncer de mama al año, mientras que 465.000 mujeres mueren por esta enfermedad cada año según la Sociedad Americana del Cáncer.

Los pacientes diagnosticados con la enfermedad deben someterse a la quimioterapia y radioterapia, los cuales son tratamientos agresivos, que matan las células cancerosas y sanas causando efectos secundarios severos en el paciente. En algunos casos, los pacientes sometidos a quimioterapia, incluso pueden morir a causa de los efectos secundarios del tratamiento.

“De hecho encontramos el talón de Aquiles de las células de cáncer”, dijo Cohen-Armon en un artículo en el diario israelí Ha’aretz. “Siempre que pueda dirigirse a las células cancerosas sin matar las sanas, podrá producir los medicamentos que causen mucho menos sufrimiento para el paciente. Incluso podremos dar un tratamiento mucho más agresivo sin preocuparnos de dañar los tejidos sanos.”

Cohen-Armon, que está trabajando con el veterinario Dr. David Castillo, científico del Centro de Investigación del Cáncer Sheba, Dr. Shai Izraeli y estudiante de doctorado Asher Castiel, espera que en el futuro, el medicamento también podría utilizarse para otros tipos de cáncer.

“Si podemos comprender el mecanismo molecular así, entonces tal vez [podamos identificar] otros fármacos que se podrían utilizar de forma aún más eficiente para otros cánceres”, explica, agregando que los investigadores todavía hoy no tienen idea de por qué la droga afecta a las células de esta manera. “Entonces, podremos dar un medicamento específico al cáncer que un paciente tiene, y sin efectos secundarios”.

Un avance que necesita apoyo

En la actualidad Cohen-Armon y su equipo se limitan a explorar los efectos de este fármaco en el cáncer de mama puesto que el medicamento está patentado en una empresa farmacéutica de los EE.UU. hasta 2017. La empresa Ramot de transferencia tecnológica de la universidad ha obtenido una patente de uso que le permitirá desarrollar la droga para tratar el cáncer de seno, y depende de la buena voluntad permanente de la empresa de EE.UU..

El equipo también está trabajando con los fondos severamente limitados. Es necesario una importante inyección de fondos para llevar el tratamiento potencial del laboratorio al mercado.

“Una universidad no puede desarrollar un medicamento por su cuenta”, dice Cohen-Armon ISRAEL21c. “Estos experimentos, si se realizan con una compañía farmacéutica, se pueden completar en menos tiempo porque tienen más recursos. Así que tenemos que encontrar una empresa interesada que colabore con nosotros en el desarrollo de esta droga.”

Cohen-Armon ha trabajado en la universidad durante 26 años. “Estoy interesada en la investigación básica, pero de vez en cuando tenemos un avance cuando me doy cuenta de que algo podría ser aplicable”, dice ella.

Hace cuatro años, mientras trabajaba con los científicos en la Universidad Bar-Ilan de Israel y la Universidad de Columbia en Nueva York, Cohen-Armon aisló una proteína en el núcleo de células animales y vegetales que es fundamental para la formación de memorias a largo plazo.

Que la proteína está siendo investigado aún más en los Estados Unidos con la ayuda de una beca de los Institutos Nacionales de Salud.

Fuente: ISRAEL21c
Traducción: Silvia Schnessel

No.  I didn’t just hear about the band Vampire Weekend, but they’ve just returned to my radar, and I figured they were worthy of some love in Rashan’s World.  Unlike some other things, I was not anywhere near one of the first to really be up on Vampire Weekend.  I think freshman year or something, I saw their video for the song A Punk on MTV U(which is actually great for hearing new music) and liked it, but didn’t pay much attention to the band.  Vampire Weekend is mainly listened to by a lot of teenage suburban girls, but guys, don’t sleep on VW!  I got their self titled debut album late last school year and got really into it over the summer.  I told my girlfriend, and she made no bones about telling me that “yeah, that’s like so last summer for me,” putting it plainly for me to see that…I’m not that cool.  Anywho, I really enjoy their sound, and overall aesthetic, prep style, with lots of button down oxfords, and chinos.  The band members met while attending the Ivy League school, Columbia University in Manhattan.  Their few videos are very simple and show them and their environment for what it is.  Why I’ve been thinking of them as of late is they have a new album, entitled Contra due out in the US on January 12.  (Why the hell is it coming out on the 11th in the UK?  They’re American!)  I think the first album was terrific, and I just hope that they’re popularity doesn’t change and ruin them for their sophomore run.  Watch the interesting video of their record, “Oxford Comma” and click on the picture of the band to link to their website where you can listen to their new track “Horchata.”

Jnah Lehrer

On Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought

In The Stuff of Thought, Pinker pitches himself as the broker of a scientific compromise between “linguistic determinism” and “extreme nativism.” The linguistic determinists argue that language is a prison for thought. The words we know define our knowledge of the world. Because Eskimos have more nouns for snow, they are able to perceive distinctions in snow that English speakers cannot. While Pinker deftly discredits extreme versions of this hypothesis, he admits that “boring versions” of linguistic determinism are probably accurate. It shouldn’t be too surprising that our choice of words can frame events, or that our vocabulary reflects the kinds of things we encounter in our daily life. (Why do Eskimos have so many words for snow? Because they are always surrounded by snow.) The language we learn as children might not determine our thoughts, but it certainly influences them.

Extreme nativism, on the other hand, argues that all of our mental concepts — the 50,000 or so words in the typical vocabulary — are innate. We are born knowing about carburetors and doorknobs and iPods. This bizarre theory, most closely identified with the philosopher Jerry Fodor, begins with the assumption that the meaning of words cannot be dissected into more basic parts. A doorknob is a doorknob is a doorknob. It only takes Pinker a few pages to prove the obvious, which is that each word is not an indivisible unit. The mind isn’t a blank slate, but it isn’t an overstuffed filing cabinet either.

So what is Pinker’s solution? He advocates the middle ground of “conceptual semantics,” in which the meaning of our words depends on an underlying framework of basic cognitive concepts. (As Pinker admits, he owes a big debt to Kant.) The tenses of verbs, for example, are shaped by our innate sense of time. Nouns are constrained by our intuitive notions about matter, so that we naturally parcel things into two different categories, objects and substances (pebbles versus applesauce, for example, or, as Pinker puts it, “hunks and goo”). Each material category comes with a slightly different set of grammatical rules. By looking at language from the perspective of our thoughts, Pinker demonstrates that many seemingly arbitrary aspects of speech, like that hunk and goo distinction, aren’t arbitrary at all: They are byproducts of our evolved mental machinery.

Pinker tries hard to make this tour of linguistic theory as readable as possible. He uses the f-word to explore the topic of transitive and intransitive verbs. He clarifies indirect speech by examining a scene from Tootsie, and Lenny Bruce makes so many appearances that he should be granted a posthumous linguistic degree. But profanity from Lenny Bruce can’t always compensate for the cryptic vocabulary and long list of competing ‘isms. Sometimes, the payoff can be disappointing. After a long chapter on curse words — this book deserves an “explicit content” warning — Pinker ends with the banal conclusion that swearing is “connected with negative emotion.” I don’t need conceptual semantics to tell me that.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Lehrer is editor at large for See magazine and the author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and more recently, How We Decide. He is a graduate of Columbia University, a Rhodes Scholar, and author of several articles for The New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.

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If you wish to read the entire review, please visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122100139.html.