April 3, 2014

U.S. Army’s New Hair Requirements Called ‘Racially Biased’

Around 6,000 people have signed a petition saying the Army's new appearance guidelines are 'racially biased' for not allowing women to wear their hair in twists or dreadlocks, among other styles.

The U.S. Army is under fire for new grooming regulations that scores of American soldiers say are “racially biased” against women with ethnically diverse hair.

Around 6,000 soldiers and civilians have signed a White House petition asking the Army to reconsider the appearance guidelines found in AR 670-1, which prohibit hairstyles including “twists, both flat twists as well as two strand twists; as well as dreadlocks, which are defined as ‘any matted or locked coils or ropes of hair.’” The petitioners have until April 19 to attract 100,000 signatures, if they want to receive a formal response from the White House.

Sgt. Jasmine Jacobs, who started the petition, told the Army Times that whereas she once wore her hair neatly in two unobtrusive twists, she is “kind of at a loss now with what to do with my hair.”

“Most black women, their hair doesn’t grow straight down, it grows out,” she said. “I’m disappointed to see the Army, rather than inform themselves on how black people wear their hair, they’ve white-washed it all.”

The military created a slideshow which offers photo examples of the unauthorized hairstyles, often modeled on racially diverse soldiers.

http://time.com/45337/petition-racially-biased-army-hair-regulations/

April 2, 2014

The Astronaut's Harley

Aficionados of fine timepieces and devotees of Harley-Davidson motorbikes do not, generally speaking, occupy the same social circles. But their planets collided on 28 March at the Baselworld 2014 watch and jewellry show in Basel, Switzerland. Bell & Ross, a French watchmaker, unveiled the mighty B-Rocket, a rumbling, log-slung hog that, to quote the company’s exuberant media release, “could have been ridden by a classic superhero, a NASA test pilot or a young gun thirsty for glory”.

Bell & Ross, known for its aircraft-inspired timepieces, spent more than a year collaborating with UK-based Shaw Harley-Davidson Speed & Custom to design and construct the B-Rocket. The bike’s swept style takes inspiration from 1960s experimental military aviation, so aerodynamic efficiency was the top priority in its creation. Domed aluminium covers conceal 10in disc brakes on the front and rear wheels, and a pair of adjustable winglets behind the front forks can be adjusted to increase front-wheel contact with the pavement. The large rear fender structure, hand-crafted of steel and complete with a flag-emblazoned fin, incorporates Plexiglass sections over the rear-wheel reveals. Alas, the nacelles below the Harley-Davidson V-twin engine do not contain jet turbines, but they are functional air intakes: the right side feeds the engine and the left cools the oil.

Like a vintage Bonneville speed-record bike, the B-Rocket features a chest-against-the-fuel-tank riding position for reduced drag, a posture eased by leather pads on the tank and turbine housings where knees rest. The rider hunkers behind a jet-like nosecone fairing, which contains only one gauge, a Bell & Ross-designed rev-counter – just enough to keep the pilot “attuned to his machine’s heartbeat”. (The B-Rocket also rolls without a headlamp, brakelamp, turn indicators or mirrors.)
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20140401-a-harley-fit-for-chuck-yeager

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/harley-bell-ross/

April 2, 2014

"Black Jeopardy"...LOL

April 2, 2014

So, You Think You're Smarter Than A CIA Agent?

The morning I met Elaine Rich, she was sitting at the kitchen table of her small town home in suburban Maryland trying to estimate refugee flows in Syria. It wasn't the only question she was considering; there were others:

Will North Korea launch a new multistage missile before May 10, 2014? Will Russian armed forces enter Kharkiv, Ukraine, by May 10? Rich's answers to these questions would eventually be evaluated by the intelligence community, but she didn't feel much pressure because this wasn't her full-time gig.

"I'm just a pharmacist," she said. "Nobody cares about me, nobody knows my name, I don't have a professional reputation at stake. And it's this anonymity which actually gives me freedom to make true forecasts."

Rich does make true forecasts; she is curiously good at predicting future world events. For the past three years, Rich and 3,000 other average people have been quietly making probability estimates about everything from Venezuelan gas subsidies to North Korean politics as part of the Good Judgment Project, an experiment put together by three well-known psychologists and some people inside the intelligence community.

According to one report, the predictions made by the Good Judgment Project are often better even than intelligence analysts with access to classified information, and many of the people involved in the project have been astonished by its success at making accurate predictions.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/04/02/297839429/-so-you-think-youre-smarter-than-a-cia-agent?ft=1&f=1001

I don't know whether to be impressed or frightened...

April 2, 2014

The Function of Black Rage

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ” – James Baldwin

When the tête-à-tête between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jonathan Chait over black culture, the “culture of poverty,” President Obama, Paul Ryan and American racism started, it was somewhat fascinating, but has become what Tressie McMillan Cottom described as “a nasty piece of cornbread.” It has left a rotten taste in my mouth. That’s mostly because, as congenial as the two have been toward one another, I detect in Chait’s argument one of my greatest pet peeves: a white person attempting to talk a black person down from their justifiable rage.

One of the issues that has come up in this debate is the way these two men view American history. Chait writes:


Coates and I disagree about racial progress in America. Coates sees the Americas' racial history as a story of continuity of white supremacy. I see the sequence (I’d call it a progression, but that term would load the argument in my favor) that began with chattel slavery and has led to the Obama administration as a story of halting, painful, non-continuous, but clear improvement.

What a luxury it must be to define the history of racism in America through the lens of progress.

He goes on:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/179106/function-black-rage