Monday, May 29th, 2023 - TrickJarrett.com: Semper Ad Meliora

On South Africa's adoption of sign language as a sign times are changing

Still, neither the death of innocent citizens nor global shame made the government move with any urgency on sign language. The main reason: the capitalist social relations embedded in South African society. Capitalism recognises people as human beings only when they can help in the generation of profits — through productive labour and through the consumption of commodities.

That is why the poor, the unemployed, the elderly, children, those living with disabilities and the mentally ill are dehumanised by the economic model that South Africa — like much of the world — follows.

This logic of capitalism is entrenched in government policy and it is behind the gross defunding of all welfare services associated with vulnerable groups. This is precisely why many scholars refer to the South African government as a neoliberal institution.

The government has taken the decision to adopt sign language as a national language only under sustained public pressure.

This is an anti-capitalist victory. Such wins recognise and prioritise people who are disregarded by capitalism. They honour human rights, transformation and true democratisation. They celebrate social justice.

5/29/2023 10:32 am |

| Tags: south africa, deaf, sign language

I can see my house from here!

Amazing view of this wonderful slice of heaven. Commenter on another website did point out how you can clearly see how much of the tree cover has been removed around the Puget Sound.

5/29/2023 3:06 pm |

| Tags: photography, satellite, pacific northwest

"It's Okay if You Can Only Take Care of Yourself Right Now"

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

—Carl Sagan

The pieces talks about the overwhelmingness of the world today and that the author came to following realization:

You don't really need to be an outspoken activist to make a difference. You don't have to take on the fossil fuel industry by yourself. You're not a coward if you're not ready to rush out into the streets against police in riot gear, who will crush your bones and call it an accident.

We don't need everyone to do that.

These days, simply wearing an N95 mask is a form of activism. Taking care of someone is a form of activism. Buying less plastic is a form of activism. Reading a book is a form of activism.

Being kind to someone is a form of activism.

(It's not the same as being "nice.")

Talking to someone about facts is a form of activism. More and more, just hanging on to human dignity is a form of activism.

Taking a nap is a form of activism. Getting a good night's sleep is a form of activism. Sitting down and relaxing is a form of activism. We desperately need more people who can just think straight. We desperately need more people who aren't rushing around with their raw emotions spilling out everywhere. And yet, we also desperately need more people to express their emotions, instead of just suppressing them until they explode outward in fireballs of rage and hate.

We desperately need more calm people.

5/29/2023 3:55 pm |

| Tags: mental health, stress, activism

No, the human genome has not been sequenced--yet

No human genome has ever been read in its entirety before. This year, scientists expect to pass that milestone for the first time.

Before the end of 2023, you should be able to read something remarkable. It will be the story of a single individual, who they are and where they come from – and it will offer hints about what their future holds. It probably won't be the most entertaining read on first glance, and it will be very, very long. But it will be a seminal moment – the publication online of the entire genome of a human being, end to end with no gaps.

[...]

This year, for the first time, the entire genome of a single human being – a man named Leon Peshkin – is due to be released.

This complete, single human genome will be a monumental technical achievement. Only 70 years have passed since the double-helix structure of DNA was first revealed, thanks in part to a grainy black and white image taken by Rosalind Franklin, transforming our understanding of how genetic information is stored.

5/29/2023 4:17 pm |

| Tags: science, genetics, biology, human genome

"Why the Idea of Western Civilization is More Myth Than History"

So I asked him—casually, I thought—why he was so interested in the ancient Greeks. He beamed up at me with an angelic smile and answered, "Because that's what you study, Mama."

At this point, my heart nearly burst with parental pride. I am a Professor of Classical Archaeology and the ancient Greeks are, quite literally, my bread and butter. But my heart sank when my son added as an afterthought, "and because the Greeks gave us Western Civilization." Buckle up, kid, I thought, you're in for a lecture.

I wanted to tell him that the ancient Greeks did not give us Western Civilization. That there is no golden thread, unfurling unbroken through time from Plato to NATO. That we in the modern West are not the heirs of a unique and elevated cultural tradition, stretching back through Atlantic modernity to Enlightenment and Renaissance Europe, and from there through the darkness of the medieval period and ultimately back to the glories of classical Greece and Rome.

[...]

But if the West and its history was invented in the imperial capitals of seventeenth century Europe, the notion of Western Civilization was born in the eighteenth century on the battlefields of revolutionary North America.

From Adams to Washington, the founding fathers found inspiration in the classical world not only for their revolutionary fervor, but also for how to justify the inconsistencies at the heart of the revolutionary movement—the cry for a freedom that permitted Black slavery, and the rejection of imperial shackles whilst continuing to impose them on others. It was the privileged inheritance of Western Civilization, the cultural and intellectual correlate of race, that justified the differential treatment of different groups of Americans.

Western Civilization is therefore not just a myth in the sense that it is a fiction that we tell ourselves, despite knowing that it is factually false. It is a myth that was invented to justify slavery, imperialism, and oppression. As such, it served the ideological needs of the time of its invention, reflecting the core values of the society that produced it.

5/29/2023 4:35 pm |

| Tags: philosophy, culture, world history, white supremacy

Decoration Day - The first Memorial Day

Back in 1996, David Blight, a professor of American History at Yale University, was researching a book on the Civil War when he had one of those once-in-a-career eureka moments. A curator at Harvard's Houghton Library asked if he wanted to look through two boxes of unsorted material from Union veterans.

"There was a file labeled 'First Decoration Day,'" remembers Blight, still amazed at his good fortune. "And inside on a piece of cardboard was a narrative handwritten by an old veteran, plus a date referencing an article in The New York Tribune. That narrative told the essence of the story that I ended up telling in my book, of this march on the race track in 1865."

The race track in question was the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club in Charleston, South Carolina. In the late stages of the Civil War, the Confederate army transformed the formerly posh country club into a makeshift prison for Union captives. More than 260 Union soldiers died from disease and exposure while being held in the race track's open-air infield. Their bodies were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstands.

[...]

And then on May 1, 1865, something even more extraordinary happened. According to two reports that Blight found in The New York Tribune and The Charleston Courier, a crowd of 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves with some white missionaries, staged a parade around the race track. Three thousand Black schoolchildren carried bouquets of flowers and sang “John Brown’s Body.” Members of the famed 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union regiments were in attendance and performed double-time marches. Black ministers recited verses from the Bible.

If the news reports are accurate, the 1865 gathering at the Charleston race track would be the earliest Memorial Day commemoration on record.

The article goes on to highlight that he couldn't find any corroboration from other groups, but then later he gave a talk and had a woman come forward. The article explained there was an event,

After his book Race and Reunion was published in 2001, Blight gave a talk about Memorial Day at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and after it was finished, an older Black woman approached him.

"You mean that story is true?" the woman asked Blight. "I grew up in Charleston, and my granddaddy used to tell us this story of a parade at the old race track, and we never knew whether to believe him or not. You mean that's true?"

5/29/2023 4:51 pm |

| Tags: black history, civil war, racism, us history