Samoa's First Female Prime Minister

There are fewer women in politics in the Pacific Islands than in any other part of the world, according to UN Women. But this year Samoa elected a woman as its head of government - only the second Pacific Island nation to do so - thanks in part to a network of women friends who supported her every step of the way.

"This is the margarita circle," the first woman prime minister of Samoa says, raising a salt-rimmed cup. "It's a place for honest confessions."

Her friends raise their glasses.

"Manuia!" they reply - "Cheers!"

It's a Sunday afternoon and a group of around 10 have just left the village church to gather for a buffet lunch on the veranda of Fiame Naomi Mata'afa's family home in Lotofaga village.

Behind them, the clear South Pacific ocean twinkles just beyond a strip of white sand.

"Do you remember how this particular journey started for us?" asks Tauiliili Alise Stunnenberg, an independent tourism consultant and Fiame's distant cousin.

"It was just over a year ago," replies the prime minister, "the day after I resigned."

On 11 September 2020, Fiame Naomi Mata'afa quit her position as deputy prime minister for Samoa's governing Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), objecting to controversial plans to remove the right of appeal against rulings of a traditional Samoan court dealing with land ownership and chiefly titles.

As she left office, the most senior woman in Samoa's government told the media she feared the country was "sliding away from the rule of law".  READ MORE...

Two Dogs

 

Afghan Women

When the Taliban swept into Kabul on 15 August the only shots they fired were in celebration. For Afghan women, the salvos represented the loss of all their rights and freedoms. Five of them have been sending the BBC daily diaries, which provide a portrait of their rapidly changing lives.

15 August - 'Day of Judgement'


There's a scene in The Handmaid's Tale, the TV series based on Margaret Attwood's dystopian novel, where the main character, book editor June Osborne, arrives at her office one morning only to learn that the country's new leaders have banned women from the workplace.


Her boss gathers all the female staff and tells them to pack up their belongings and go home.


On 15 August 2021, Maari, a former soldier in the Afghan Army, has an almost identical experience. At 07:30, she leaves for work in a government ministry, expecting a busy day of meetings and conferences. Stepping outside, she immediately notices that the streets are eerily quiet, but she continues on her way, getting out her phone to check her calendar for meetings.


"You've come to work!" say astonished male colleagues when she walks in.


"I don't think Kabul is going to fall," she replies.


But she has barely put down her bag when her boss confronts her. "Go and tell all the women to go home," he says. She does as she's told, going from room to room telling female employees to leave right away. But when her boss asks her to go home, she refuses.


"As long as my male colleagues are staying and working, I am too," she says.


Maari's not just any member of staff. She's a high-ranking official with an impressive military record, and her boss reluctantly accepts what she says.


But as the day goes by, reports of the Taliban entering Kabul become impossible to ignore. Maari's boss decides to shut the ministry's doors and send everyone home.


Elsewhere in the city, Khatera, a geography teacher, is starting a new lesson - her 40 students, all teenage boys, flick through their books to find the right page.  READ MORE...

Dog and Kitten

 

CAPITALISM: A Giant AMWAY Pyramid Scheme

Our free market enterprise system has been specifically and uniquely designed to keep a majority of people from moving up the financial ladder from the standpoint of any financial gains they have received over a given year are offset by inflation and the devaluation of the dollar.

Minimum wage in the 60's was $1.25 and today it is $7.25  but gas was $.18/gallon and today before Biden it was $1.50 or so....  YES, we earn more, but it costs more to live so if were to factor in inflation, our dollar was more valuable in the 60's...

Let's look at our situation through a person's net worth...

NET WORTH CONCEPT

Top 20%

One Percent broken down

.25%  are high billionaires

.75%  are low billionaires

• 1%
• 9% are multi-millionaires
• 10% are high/medium millionaires

Bottom 80%

• 10% are low millionaires
• 30% are high hundreds of thousands
• 20% are medium hundreds of thousands
• 16% are low hundreds of thousands
• 3% are $50,000 to hundreds of thousands
• 1% are less than $50,000

Our Free Market Enterprise system is based upon GREED...  there must be greed otherwise we will have no economic growth...  We need no more than 3% inflation to achieve consistent economic growth.

How do Corporations increase Revenue?

• Engineers design products with built in obsolescence
• then companies sell us warranties in case things go wrong
• advertising encourages us to buy shit we don't need
• new fashion designs each year
• new car designs

Floating Previous Knowledge

1.  IBM had a policy of keeping their executives in debt - harder to change from IBM to another company - studied this in grad school

2.  The Peter Principle - people are promoted to that level which is just above their incompetence

Another concept of suppression is public education

• elementary thru high school only prepares us for college not to go out and work
• college prepares us for grad school not to go out to work
• grad school prepares us for a PhD not to go out to work
• Once employed with our college degree, very little of our college classes prepared us for the job  
• Education from 1960 to 2021 has been dumbed down... 

WHY?

Aren't educators smart?

In order for the 1% to remain in the 1% we must have systems in place to keep the people from CLIMBING UP THE LADDER not just to upper management but to their level...

1. Debt helps
2. Lack of knowledge helps
3. Domestic turmoil helps
4. Early retirement programs help
5. Inflation helps
6. Internal conflict helps
7. Wars help
8. Pandemics help

How did these individuals become so wealthy?

Gates

Jobs 

Zuckerburg 

Buffett become 

Bezos become 

Musk become 

How are people like that created?

They circumvented the rules...   

Our Free Market Enterprise System is not illegal because you can get to the top like Gates, Buffet, Jobs, etc. but it is highly unlikely that you will achieve that goal...  unless you find some way to circumvent the rules.

Did You Know?

Gates and Jobs were given windows by IBM

Jobs improved the operating system and Gates stole it from him

Windows was the first operating system so all PCs simply incorporated that OS

Gates was in the right place at the right time...  or LUCK...   

Wealthy people don't believe in LUCK...  they say that LUCK FAVORS THE PREPARED which is not luck at all because you were prepared.

SAM WALTON was a billionaire, but he was also uneducated and it took him his entire lifetime to build up his money.  He circumvented NOTHING...

On HULU there is a series entitled the people who built america...  or something like that...  they all circumvented the rules or broke the law in some cases and in other cases they STOLE the information from their competitors...  RUTHLESSNESS

The General Public is being controlled:

• COLLEGE is designed for us to make more so we can spend more
• Companies will teach us what we really need to know
• Advertising will teach us to spend more than we really need to spend
• Engineers will design products that need to be replaced prematurely
• Insurance companies try to get us to be insurance poor
• Business is designed to take you money and give you less and less in return via a product
• The more we have people trying to take your money the less money we will have to grow our wealth and move up

A FRIGGING PYRAMID

Online Education Does Not Teach Students

 

I have been in and around higher education for about for 35 years of my 45 year career...  I was a teacher, a course designer, an administrator, and a consultant...  

I have designed as well as taught online courses and while there is more work for the teacher than being in the classroom, there are many problems with the quality of learning that online students face.

Online courses basically involve the following:

• Reading assignment
• Research assignment
• Writing assignment
• Watch a teaching video or slide show
• Discussion Forum Assignment
• Quiz Assignment
• Optional team assignment

NOTE:  all of these assignments are calculated out on the number of minutes each assignment is likely to take...  and, they are designed so that "X" number of hours each week will be allocated by the student to complete this course.

Some will move faster than anticipated while some will move slower than anticipated.

Unintended Consequences...

1.  Teachers cannot prove students did the reading

2.  Teachers cannot prove student did the writing

3.  Teachers cannot prove that students did the quiz

4.  Teachers cannot prove that students participated in the discussion

5.  Teachers cannot prove that students did not use the textbook when taking the test

6.  Teachers cannot prove that students did not collaborate outside of class sharing answers

I used to work for ITT Technical Institute in Knoxville, TN and we were mandated to take online courses each year.  We would get together and take the test collectively and missed one or two intentionally sometimes.  The management did not correlate the answers, just that we had taken the course.

Did we do ourselves a disservice?

Perhaps, but our collective mindset was that the course was written by an amateur and contained no viable information that we could use to make us a better instructor.

Online quizzes are always the same:

• so many multiple choice questions
• so many True/False questions
• so many fill in the blank questions
• so many essay questions

NOTE:  the essay question had an answering matrix that teachers use to compare the answer with the points that the course designer thinks should have been mentioned...

The quality of writing is not typically looked at...  that is to say... if the writing is done at a high school level instead of a college level, there is no penalty assessed against the student.

BASICALLY,

the student can earn a very high grade level and did not learn or retained anything...  and, may not even have done the work themselves...

HOW IS THIS IMPROVING EDUCATION IN AMERICA???

Bike Jump

Stories of Transformation

Change is constant. How we adapt isn’t. That’s true for our personal and professional lives—it’s part of the human experience.

No matter the cause of the change, the success outcome is largely measured by how well we react and respond to it. I know now that even the most challenging and difficult situations can bring out the best in us, spurring our creativity and strengthening our commitment to continuous improvement. And those who make changes that positively impact others are, often unknowingly, the heroes of someone else’s story.

Not all heroes wear capes

Heroes show up in all types of circumstances and in all shapes and sizes. Generally, a hero is someone who’s done something admirable and impactful that improves the lives of others. Some of those things are small acts or interactions that can go unnoticed, especially in the business environment.

We’re seeking to change that.

DocuSign is celebrating the stories of people who’ve had to rethink and change the way work gets done. It takes courage and a bit of fearlessness to embrace change, reimagine a new way and then bring everyone together in agreement. And that’s only half the battle: you also have to be committed to keeping that positive change moving forward, continuously evaluating and improving.

My role at DocuSign allows me to spend a lot of time with customers, and I’ve been fortunate to witness many of these stories first-hand over the last two years. I’d like to share a couple here, and encourage you to read each of them in more detail. We hope this will help you think of someone you know who has a hero story worth celebrating. If so, we’d love for you to nominate them here.

Real stories of real change

David
Meet David. He’s VP of strategic development at Dilawri, Canada’s largest automotive dealer group. Anyone who’s purchased a car knows it can be a time-consuming experience. Think of all the comparisons, test drives and forms to complete and sign. Now imagine having to do all that remotely. Seems impossible—but not for David and Dilawri.

Through a mixture of e-signature technology and remote payment tools, David helped all of Dilawri’s dealers continue to operate during the lockdown. Even better, their customers have shown a continued preference for the convenience of remote transactions, so there’s no U-turn in sight on their journey to full digital transformation.

Tracy
Here’s Tracy. She works as an information systems analyst for Louisville Metro Government. While change can happen in government, it’s typically an incremental and slower-paced process. Thankfully, Tracy excels at embracing and driving positive change.

For Kentucky’s largest city, “Paper-free by 2023” isn’t just a catchy slogan. It’s Louisville’s plan to be more sustainable in their operations; reducing paper waste is a huge component. But while that effort was the initial driver, the pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation.

Tracy implemented e-signature technology to cut paper waste, which also resulted in substantial cost savings. But the best part happened next: the agency—and people’s lives—were transformed by unexpected productivity gains. And when the pandemic hit, that meant Louisville Metro could focus on positively impactful things like streamlining processes at a mass vaccination site and helping people with utilities and eviction prevention. READ MORE...

Cat & Bird

 

A Pixelated Space...

The search for signatures of quantum gravity forges ahead.
Sand dunes seen from afar seem smooth and unwrinkled, like silk sheets spread across the desert. But a closer inspection reveals much more. As you approach the dunes, you may notice ripples in the sand. Touch the surface and you would find individual grains. The same is true for digital images: zoom far enough into an apparently perfect portrait and you will discover the distinct pixels that make the picture.

The universe itself may be similarly pixelated. Scientists such as Rana Adhikari, professor of physics at Caltech, think the space we live in may not be perfectly smooth but rather made of incredibly small discrete units. “A spacetime pixel is so small that if you were to enlarge things so that it becomes the size of a grain of sand, then atoms would be as large as galaxies,” he says.

Adhikari and scientists around the world are on the hunt for this pixelation because it is a prediction of quantum gravity, one of the deepest physics mysteries of our time. Quantum gravity refers to a set of theories, including string theory, that seeks to unify the macroscopic world of gravity, governed by general relativity, with the microscopic world of quantum physics. At the core of the mystery is the question of whether gravity, and the spacetime it inhabits, can be “quantized,” or broken down into individual components, a hallmark of the quantum world.

“Sometimes there is a misinterpretation in science communication that implies quantum mechanics and gravity are irreconcilable,” says Cliff Cheung, Caltech professor of theoretical physics. “But we know from experiments that we can do quantum mechanics on this planet, which has gravity, so clearly they are consistent. The problems come up when you ask subtle questions about black holes or try to merge the theories at very short distance scales.”

Because of the incredibly small scales in question, some scientists have deemed finding evidence of quantum gravity in the foreseeable future to be an impossible task. Although researchers have come up with ideas for how they might find clues to its existence—around black holes; in the early universe; or even using LIGO, the National Science Foundation-funded observatories that detect gravitational waves—no one has yet turned up any hints of quantum gravity in nature.  READ MORE...

Lovers

 

Luristan Bronzes

Presented  by Phillip R. Tucker

When exquisite bronze figurines began to flood the antique market in the late 1920s, no one knew much about them. Artworks depicting figures and animals, embossed bronze cups and delicate pins delighted merchants, who were impressed with their beauty. Inquiries have been made as to their origins, but the answers were somewhat vague. Rather than naming a particular colony or civilization, traders would only point to one region of the Zagros Mountains: Luristan (located in western Iran and known today as Lorestan).

The Luristan Bronzes Flood began in the fall of 1928 in the sleepy town of Harsin, about 20 miles east of Kermanshah. A local farmer discovered several beautiful bronze objects in his fields and sold them. Word of his finds spread and soon the city filled with merchants who bought these works of art and then resold them to museums and private collections. It was a profitable arrangement that suited many parties, and very little was done to stop it.

Great interest in the excavation of these bronzes arose among academics and locals. André Godard, the director of the Iranian Archaeological Service in 1928, described the method used by the inhabitants to detect a site to be excavated. They first found a source. Once this was located there was a high probability of finding a nearby settlement with a cemetery. The formula was simple and effective: look for a source of water, and an ancient necropolis will not be far away.  (The first superpower in history arose out of ancient Iran.)

Archaeologists in the air
The first Western archaeologist to investigate the bronzes was German-born archaeologist Erich Schmidt, who began exploring Luristan in 1935. His work at the site was innovative thanks to his wife, Mary Helen. The two shared a passion for archeology: they first met while visiting the Tepe Hissar site in Iran.

Mary Helen advocated the use of airplanes to explore sites from above, and she purchased one for missions. Name it Friend of Iran, the plane surveyed Luristan and other Iranian sites, including Persepolis (the former capital of the Persian Empire), which Schmidt would study. After obtaining clearance from Iran, reconnaissance flights flew in 1935-36 and again in 1937. Schmidt’s aerial photography would prove invaluable not only for documenting sites but also for methodically planning them. excavations.

Follow me...

Critique of TV Series

I don't spend a lot of time each day or each week watching TV series but I might go for a week straight and watch 2-3 episodes back-to-back and then there might be several days before I start watching again.  However, I will not watch a TV Series where I have to wait a week for the next episode to be released.  I will wait until the series is over and then I will watch however many episodes I want to watch at one time.  Game of Thrones cured me of waiting a week for the next episode.

While each series is different with the various plots taking place in the past, present, or future, there are still some commonalities that many of them share.

FIRST - most if not all of the main characters smoke cigarettes

SECOND - most if not all of the main characters drink alcohol and visit a local bar, every night it seems after work

THIRD - most if not all of the main characters regardless of their socio-economic level in society drink wine at the dinner meal

FOURTH - there is always one side that is really stupid and lacks common sense while the other side is always incredibly more clever...  this is also true with competing individuals on the "good" side or on the "evil" side

FIFTH - plots, for the most part, are all the same except they explore variation of the same theme, such as:

• world/global/universe domination
• control over something for evil purposes
• negative influences by one or both parents
• being estranged from siblings
• remaining employed while always violating the rules
• alienation by other employees
• violating protocols to solve the problem

SIXTH - utter destruction of a city due to the violence between two opposing forces...  OR...  a high speed car chase that destroys millions and millions of dollars worth of property

SEVENTH - most if not all of the main and supporting characters have excellent white teeth regardless of the kind of dentisty that was available at the time

EIGHTH - most if not all of the characters never seem to take showers and yet, their hair is always coiffed

NINTH - regardless of how many times a person is shot or wounded or gets into very physical fist fight, they always act like they have no pain afterwards and can undergo another very physical fight the next day

TENTH - Good always triumphs over evil by the end of the story even though the opposite is always true while the story is progressing

Pants

God and Psychological Distress

Summary: Researchers report religious people who relate to a God in an uncertain or anxious manner are more likely to experience psychological distress disorders, including anxiety, paranoia, and obsessive compulsions. Findings reveal how different styles of attachment to a deity may be associated with poorer mental health outcomes.

Source: Westmont College

A national study examines the link between a perceived relationship with God and mental health from a sample of more than 1,600 Americans.

The research suggests that religious believers who relate to God in an uncertain or anxious manner are more likely to experience symptoms of psychological distress, including anxiety, paranoia, obsession and compulsion.

The study, “Attachment to God and Psychological Distress: Evidence of a Curvilinear Relationship” appears in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. It relies on data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey, a national survey of American religious beliefs, values, and behaviors. The research sheds light on how different styles of connecting to God—or attaching to God—may be related to poorer mental health.

“Most research on attachment to God has suggested a simple linear relationship, where a less avoidant—or secure—relationship is associated with better mental health and a more avoidant relationship with worse,” said Blake Victor Kent, assistant professor of sociology at Westmont College. “But there have been hints in the research that the relationship may actually look more like an upside down U-shaped curve. So that’s what we looked for, and that’s what we found.”

The inverse curve was found in a scale composed of six items measuring avoidance and non-avoidance in relationship with God. Sample items read:

• “I have a warm relationship with God.”
• “God knows when I need support.”
• “God seems to have little or no interest in my personal affairs.”

TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS , CLICK HERE...

Hampster

 

New Genetics Research

A photograph of the skeleton of one of the four individuals who we have sequenced who we think is likely to have participated in the migration we detect into southern Britain and to have displaced half the ancestry of the local population. This skeleton was excavated from the site of Cliffs End Farm in Kent. Credit: Wessex Archaeology

Two new studies highlight technological advances in large-scale genomics and open windows into the lives of ancient people.

New research reveals a major migration to the island of Great Britain 3,000 years ago and offers fresh insights into the languages spoken at the time, the ancestry of present-day England and Wales, and even ancient habits of dairy consumption.

The findings are described in Nature by a team of more than 200 international researchers led by Harvard geneticists David Reich and Nick Patterson. Michael Isakov, a Harvard undergraduate who discovered the existence of the migration, is one of the co-first authors.


This image is of bronze age tools from the National Museums of Scotland, which could give readers a sense of the material culture associated with people who lived at the time of the migration. Credit: Bronze Age tools curated the National Museums of Scotland

The analysis is one of two Reich-led studies of DNA data from ancient Britain that Nature published on Tuesday. Both highlight technological advances in large-scale genomics and open new windows into the lives of ancient people.

“This shows the power of large-scale genetic data in concert with archaeological and other data to get rich information about our past from a time before writing,” said Reich, a professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. “The studies are not only important for Great Britain, where we now have far more ancient DNA data than in any other region, but also because of what they show about the promise of similar studies elsewhere in the world.”

The researchers analyzed the DNA of 793 newly reported individuals in the largest genome-wide study involving ancient humans. Their findings reveal a large-scale migration likely from somewhere in France to the southern part of Great Britain, or modern-day England and Wales, that eventually replaced about 50 percent of the ancestry of the island during the Late Bronze Age (1200 to 800 B.C.).

The study supports a recent theory that early Celtic languages came to Great Britain from France during the Late Bronze Age. It challenges two prominent theories: that the languages arrived hundreds of years later, in the Iron Age, or 1,500 years earlier at the dawn of the Bronze Age.  READ MORE...

Moons

 

Evolution of the Alphabet

Over the course of 2021, the Greek alphabet was a major part of the news cycle.

COVID-19 variants, which are labeled with Greek letters when becoming a variant of concern, normalized their usage. From the Alpha variant in the UK, to the Delta variant that spread from India to become the dominant global strain, the Greek alphabet was everywhere. Seemingly overnight, the Omicron variant discovered in South Africa has now taken the mantle as the most discussed variant.

But the Greek alphabet is used in other parts of our lives as well. For example, Greek letters are commonly used in mathematics and science, like Sigma (Σ) denoting a sum or Lambda (λ) used to represent the half-life of radioactive material.

And the study of linguistics shows us why using Greek letters in English isn’t completely farfetched. This visualization from Matt Baker at UsefulCharts.com demonstrates how the modern Latin script used in English evolved from Greek, and other, alphabets.

It’s All Proto-Sinaitic to Me
Before there was English, or Latin, or even Greek, there was Proto-Sinaitic.

Considered the first alphabet ever used, the Proto-Sinaitic script was derived in Canaan, around the biblical Land of Israel. It was repurposed from Egyptian hieroglyphs that were commonly seen in the area (its name comes from Mount Sinai), and used to describe sounds instead of meanings.

As the first Semitic script, Proto-Sinaitic soon influenced other Semitic languages. It was the precursor to the Phoenician alphabet, which was used in the area of modern-day Lebanon and spread across the Mediterranean and became the basis for Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and of course, Greek.

Evolving into the Greek, Roman, and Latin Alphabets
Over time, the alphabet continued to become adopted and evolve across different languages.

The first forms of the Archaic Greek script are dated circa 750 BCE. Many of the letters remained in Modern Greek, including Alpha, Beta, Delta, and even Omicron, despite first appearing more than 2,500 years ago.

Soon the Greek alphabet (and much of its culture) was borrowed into Latin, with Archaic Latin script appearing circa 500 BCE. The evolution into Roman script, with the same recognizable letters used in modern English, occurred 500 years later in 1 CE.  READ MORE...