(a)theistic existentialism

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/09/30/first.blasphemy.day/index.html

A recognized blasphemy day? INCREDIBLE. I refused to even capitalize the "b". I would consider myself a theistic, bordering on atheistic, existentialist. I do not see; however, why it is necessary to launch a recognized day where people collectively bash on religion/God. First, aside from the few states where this is illegal, protecting the rights of free speech in religion/anti-religion is performed anyhow. Secondly, does anyone really know the fate of the unknown? How can there be a concrete event, such as this one, without it being based on concrete thoughts? Essentially, these individuals are putting their "faith" in God being nonexistent, thus recognizing the idea of God as existent.

Thirdly, regarding the event...
The devout Catholic turned non-believer leads a movement that is all about protecting people's rights to speak irreverently about religion. [...] You might say he is a blasphemer's savior.

Religion can be described as a particular system/movement of faith and worship. See the above excerpt for clarification.

...

Science of female desire

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?pagewanted=1&em

“The horrible reality of psychological research, is that you can’t pull apart the cultural from the biological.”

Baucus Caucus

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/08/19/the-baucus-caucus-phrma-insurance-hospitals-and-rahm/

Repeat of Kyoto Protocol?

Today, as eco-activists from across the country will gather in New York to hear Obama's position on the climate summit, I remain hesitant. Already, people are growing less concerned with Obama's words, his ideas, and his lack of concise efforts. Now, with a globally influential event at hand, I wonder if Obama's warnings will come across as decisive, effective, and thorough. And with our nation being one of the top two emitters of greenhouse gases, Obama's actions must be definite.

It wasn't long ago, under the Bush administration, that the US made big mistakes after changing their stance on CO2 emission reductions:

The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997. It was opened for signature on March 16, 1998, and closed a year later. Under terms of the agreement, the Kyoto Protocol would not take effect until 90 days after it was ratified by at least 55 countries involved in the UNFCCC. Another condition was that ratifying countries had to represent at least 55 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990. The first condition was met on May 23, 2002, when Iceland became the 55th country to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. When Russia ratified the agreement in November 2004, the second condition was satisfied, and the Kyoto Protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005. As a U.S. presidential candidate, George W. Bush promised to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Shortly after he took office in 2001, however, President Bush withdrew U.S. support for the Kyoto Protocol and refused to submit it to Congress for ratification. Instead, Bush proposed a plan with incentives for U.S. businesses to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions 4.5 percent by 2010, which he claimed would equal taking 70 million cars off the road. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, however, the Bush plan actually would result in a 30 percent increase in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions over 1990 levels instead of the 7 percent reduction the treaty requires. That’s because the Bush plan measures the reduction against current emissions instead of the 1990 benchmark used by the Kyoto Protocol. While his decision dealt a serious blow to the possibility of U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol, Bush wasn’t alone in his opposition. Prior to negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution saying the U.S. should not sign any protocol that failed to include binding targets and timetables for both developing and industrialized nations or that "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.

The plan is to replace the Kyoto treaty with a new one, to be agreed in Demark this December. However, prospects of a worthy deal is becoming less obvious everyday. And truly, it seems the biggest worries lay in China, whom are skeptical as to why they should contribute to a mess created by the wealthy--especially when it will put a damper on positive economic trends of their own country. As they watch our nation waver with half-made decisions, it is as if they are standing next us repeating the words "after you"--after all they are in no rush to push for reduction of emissions when statistics show that such efforts will not cause a decrease in emissions until at least 2030.

Even members of Obama's cabinet have recently spoken out against this issue, agreeing that decisions to be made in climate change may have to be put of until next year. And with our nation being one of the most critical facets to the Copenhagen Summit, it seems that this global effort will again be neglected.

Turritopsis Nutricula. Aka. WOW

Meet the world’s only immortal animal

If you’re thinking McLeod, you couldn’t be further from the truth. What you have to do is think small; not microscopic, just big enough to see with your naked eye. Turritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan, and it’s considered by scientists to be the only animal that cheated death.

Solitary organisms are (according to current belief) doomed to die, after they completed their life cycle. Hydrozoa are a huge class of predatory animals that live mostly in saltwater, closely related to jellyfish and corals. Eggs and sperm from an adult jellyfish (medusa) and they then develop into polyp stage. Medusae evolve asexually from polyps.

Still, our Turritopsis nutricula (could we call it Joe??) managed to find a way to beat that. What these little folks do is they revert completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after they reach sexual maturity. They’re even cooler than that. When they’re young they’ve got only several tentacles, but at a mature stage, they get to 80-90 of them.

They’re able to return to polyp stage due to a cell change in the external screen (Exumbrella), which allows them to bypass death. As far as scientists have been able to find out, this change renders the hydrozoa virtually immortal.

- Zime Science

Sex Trafficking and its Roots

I want to get my hands on "Women's Lives, Men's Laws"--written by a strong and influential feminist, Catharine MacKinnon. MacKinnon has consistently fought for making equal rights a reality for women. Making visible the deep gender bias of existing law, she even proposes situations where the legal system favors women over men--thus evaluating both sides of the gender bias. I want to see her view point on sexual discrimination/abuse, prostitution, pornography, and racism.

My interest lies in a cross-cultural and cross-national understanding of law, ethics, history, and its contribution to female subjugation. The following is a journal article by Ed Vitagliano, whom provides insight of sex trafficking across Asia, and even well into America. Although this problem is perhaps well-known, it is constantly overlooked and thus made less of a reality and more of a story. I recently watched a very influential South Indian movie, Water, which made real the occurrences of female sex trafficking cases. I have met a number of female sex slaves as a volunteer in a women protection program. It is a harsh reality, and I believe it may have associations deeply rooted in the legal system.

By Ed Vitagliano By the thousands Trafficking: “knowingly obtaining by any means – often by force, fraud, or coercion – any person for involuntary servitude or forced labor,” according to Thomas M. Steinfatt, professor of communication at the University of Miami, who studies the subject. It operates just like any other export-import business. According to Donna M. Hughes, professor of women’s studies at the University of Rhode Island and an expert on the sexual exploitation of women, girls and women are procured in one nation, conveyed through transit countries, and finally arrive in the nation of destination. There, “men use them in legalized or widely tolerated sex businesses, and men physically travel around the world to buy women and children in prostitution, as a form of tourism,” said Hughes. “Through recently developed global communications technology, these forms of sexual exploitation are now carried out through phone lines and satellite transmission,” namely the Internet. To call what happens to these women slavery is not hyperbole. Hughes said, “The methods used in trafficking for sexual exploitation comprise a modern slave trade. The perpetrators range from loosely connected procurers and pimps to transnational organized crime networks.” It’s big business. Hughes said estimates of the money that pours in through the sex industry – prostitution, the sale of women and children through sex trafficking, the sale of child pornography, etc. – are between $7 billion and $57 billion a year. That indicates that a lot of flesh is being peddled, although exact figures are difficult to come by. Hughes said a United Nations estimate puts the number of women and children who are sexually exploited by the sex trade industry each year at one million, while child-advocacy groups, according to a story in USA Today, estimate that there are currently two million children worldwide that are working as sex slaves.
Locked in cages While the exact numbers may be difficult to ascertain, there are admittedly thousands of women and girls who are deceived or simply sold into forcible sexual slavery. In his heart-breaking account of the international sex trade, journalist Peter Landesman wrote in The New York Times Magazine, “Some of them have been baited by promises of legitimate jobs and a better life in America; many have been abducted; others have been bought from or abandoned by their impoverished families.” Hughes told Voice of America, “Usually what happens is the woman is searching for a job and she is told that she can go abroad and make a lot of money … but the problem is that when she arrives in that particular country … she is told no, in fact you’re not going to be a waitress, a nanny, you know, whatever job, a dancer maybe, that we told you. You’re going to be in prostitution and you don’t have a choice.” Those holding the women in slavery tell the victims they must remain and work as prostitutes until they pay off the transportation cost to the new country. Hughes said they’re often told, “We’ll beat you up if you don’t do what we want and you owe us $30,000.” Sometimes, Hughes said, the men do release the women after the “debt” has been paid. “Other times, if the women can’t earn as much for the pimp as he likes, he sells her again. I’ve interviewed women who have been sold four or five times. Of course, the problem with this is that their debt starts all over again.” The coercion process is often a brutal one. Bharti Tapas, a girl interviewed by ABC News Downtown in 2001 for a special on the sex trade in India, was 14 when she was sold into slavery by her own parents, and then forced into prostitution. “When I arrived at the brothel, I refused to do what they told me to and they beat me and starved me for 10 days,” Tapas said. “I thought I would rather kill myself than be forced to work as a prostitute.” She relented, according to the story, and joined “thousands of other girls who are beaten, locked in tiny cages or hidden in attics. Some are forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a day under the watchful eyes of madams and pimps.” Psychiatrist Wendy Freed authored a report for Physicians for Human Rights. Her report on the psychological aspects of women trapped in sexual slavery in Cambodia presented this frightening pattern faced by thousands of girls and women: “The young women have been in captivity for a period of weeks to months or years. Initially there is shock and disbelief. Many young women describe not being able to believe that they had been sold. … Once they realize that in fact they are sold, they fight the brothel owner’s demand that they accept customers. Refusal leads to beatings, being locked in a room, and going without food. This persists until the young woman gives up and realizes that indeed they are trapped and have no options.… At some point in this process, the young woman becomes submissive in order to avoid further beatings and torment; her ‘spirit is broken.’ She surrenders, becomes resigned and accomodates to the circumstances of captivity.” Hughes calls these brothels “sexual gulags,” and cites the reports of international aid workers that describe men buying oral sex from girls as young as five years old, and intercourse with girls as young as 10 or 11.
Porn – part of the problem Certainly poverty plays a critical role in motivating poor girls and women to seek employment in far away places, as well as generating a market for the sale of women to brothels. But what is driving the increase in demand for illicit sex? In an article in the Journal of Sexual Aggression, Hughes said, “In the last three decades, prostitution and pornography have become increasingly tolerated, normalized and legitimized, resulting in expansion of sex industries all over the world.” This tolerance, she said, has “increased men’s demand for women and girls to be used as sexual entertainment or acts of violence. The demand is met by increased recruitment of women and girls into the sex industry, usually by violence, deception or exploitation of those made vulnerable by poverty, unemployment and prior victimization.” The Internet has made pornography ubiquitous, and Hughes said this new forum has “provided pornographers access to a global audience with almost no restrictions or regulations. It provided men, who are usually secretive about their exploitation of women and children, with easy, private access to unlimited amounts of pornography.” The country that comes in for the lion’s share of the blame is the United States. Hughes said, “The U.S. is the country mainly responsible for the industrialization of pornography and prostitution, either in the U.S. or in prostitution centers created by the demand from U.S. military personnel. The U.S. is also the home of the Internet pornography industry.” For example, Hughes said that, according to one study, 70% of the customers for live sex shows on the Internet are in the U.S.
American taste for trafficked girls Virtual sex is not the only decadent delicacy for some Americans; the simple fact is that thousands of trafficked women and girls are ferried into the U.S. for the purpose of illicit sexual encounters. In an article for The Weekly Standard, Hughes wrote about the extent of the sex trafficking industry that shuttles girls through Mexico to brothels outside San Diego, California. “Over a 10-year period, hundreds of girls, 12 to 18 years old,” were brought into the U.S. by Mexican nationals. “The girls were sold to farm workers – between 100 and 300 at a time – in small ‘caves’ made of reeds in the fields. Many of the girls had babies, who were used as hostages with death threats against them, so their mothers would not try to escape,” Hughes said. An American doctor who was volunteering to provide health care to migrant workers in the area told Hughes that younger and younger girls were brought over the border – some nine and 10 years old – who might be used by as many as 35 men in one hour. “The first time I went to the camps I didn’t vomit only because I had nothing in my stomach,” the doctor told her. “It was truly grotesque and unimaginable.” When she wanted to complain to government authorities about the abuse, the doctor was instructed by her supervisor to concern herself only with trying to prevent the girls from contracting sexually transmitted diseases by providing condoms. “I fought a lot with the U.S. government and they told me that I shouldn’t do anything, that I had signed a federal agreement of confidentiality,” the doctor said. From San Diego to New York City, girls and women are being abused in the middle of normal neighborhoods, “hiding in plain sight,” according to Hughes. It is a staggering vice, and Landesman said the U.S. has become “a major importer of sex slaves. Last year the C.I.A. estimated that between 18,000 and 20,000 people are trafficked annually into the United States.” Of these, an estimated 10,000 are victims of the sex slave industry. Those numbers add up. According to Kevin Bales, author of the book, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, and president of Free the Slaves, America’s largest anti-slavery organization, there are 30,000 to 50,000 sex slaves residing – against their will – in the U.S. at any given time. Cracking down Some have suggested that legalizing prostitution would put an end to such a depraved industry, but the opposite may very well be true. Hughes said, “What happens when you have a large demand for women in prostitution is that you don’t have enough local women who are able to fill up all these slots that are needed, so the pimps have to start looking abroad.” She added that evidence from the Netherlands, Germany and Australia – where prostitution is legal – indicates that such a policy has “resulted in increased trafficking of women to meet the increased demand for women in prostitution and an accompanying increase in organized crime.” While prostitution is still illegal in the U.S., many municipalities have minimal penalties for prostitution, reflecting the belief that it really isn’t that big a deal. “Pimping must be made a felony,” Hughes told the AFA Journal in an interview, “and the government needs to enforce the laws against trafficking that are already on the books in this country. There are lots of local and state laws against it, but often prostitution is considered a victimless crime or nuisance crime.” Under the Bush administration, the federal government has begun to make the prosecution of trafficking a priority. Last September, in an address to the United Nations, President George Bush called the sex slave trade “a humanitarian crisis.”

fresh produce=)

I spent this morning finding the sweetest berries and freshest breads from my local farmers market. Next time you go grocery shopping, try heading to your local market
before settling for Trader Joe's, Jewels, or Dominicks.

Not only are the fruit and vegetables much more ripe and the breads more fresh, but all these foods come from natural resources without any touch of GMO's, fillers, pesticides, or hormones. Ooh and you are supporting your local farmers!


Eating locally and shopping at farmer’s markets…

• Supports small-scale farm families so they can pass on their skills and passions to future generations
• Uses less resources due to decreased shipping
• Supports more environmentally friendly farming practices
• Builds relationships between the farmer and the consumers
  

Here is a list of your local farmers in Chicago! My favorite is Geneva Greens, as well as the following others:

Sweet Earth Organic Farm

608-875-6026

Vegetables, Fruits, Flowers

Tiny Greens

217-328-9367

Micro greens, Wheatgrass

Mick Klug Farms

269-208-9334

Berries, Sweet and sour cherries, Nectarines and peaches, Apricots, Melons, Vegetables

Prairie Fruits Farm

217-643-2314

goat cheese, fruit