Saturday, May 31, 2014

Los Angeles EVENTS, June 2014

Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, Kat, Wisdom Quarterly; Pacifica Radio L.A. (kpfk.org)
Lummis Day Festival of Northeast Los Angeles, June 1, Highland Park (lummisday.org)

The revolution will be televised thanks to Uprising TV with Sonali Kolhatkar. Attending the launch party at Cafe Club Fais Do Do, L.A. (uprisingtv.brownpapertickets.com)

Brazilian Summer Festival, Ford Amphitheatre, Hollywood, L.A. (braziliannites.com)

Rebuild the Philippines, June 8, Greek Theatre, Hollywood (greektheatrela.com)
Los Angeles Greek Film Festival, June 4-8, 2014, Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood (lagff.org)
Dances with Films Festival, Hollywood, California (danceswithfilms.com)
Pacifica Free Speech Radio L.A., Santa Barbara (KPFK FM 90.7, 98.7) post fund drive

Do we really need chemical soaps?

It's not "magic" -- Nature can make us beautiful: money saved on safe, natural cleaners
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Are we really too clean? (On Point)
New York Times: My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, [Probiotic]-Rich Hygiene Experiment — “My skin began to change for the better. It actually became softer and smoother, rather than dry and flaky, as though a sauna’s worth of humidity had penetrated my winter-hardened shell. 

Plastics, nano-ingredients pollute
And my complexion, prone to hormone-related breakouts, was clear. For the first time ever, my pores seemed to shrink. As I took my morning “shower” — a three-minute rinse in a bathroom devoid of hygiene products — I remembered all the antibiotics I took as a teenager to quell my acne. How funny it would be if adding [good, probiotic] bacteria were the answer all along.”

Mission Viejo Bodies
4 dead in Mission Viejo murder-suicide
CNN: Minnesota issues ban on [toxic] antibacterial ingredient – “The health effects of [industrial chemical toxin] triclosan for humans are still unclear. Some studies suggest that the chemical could be linked to antibiotic resistance, but evidence is mixed, and the Environmental Protection Agency says more research is needed to evaluate risk. There is some evidence that long-term exposure to some ingredients in antibacterial products, including triclosan, “could pose health risks, such as bacterial resistance or hormonal effects,” according to the FDA.”

Santa Barbara Rampage
Isla Vista rampage: UCSB mourns
San Francisco Chronicle: Pfizer joins Second Genome for microbiome study — “Scientists have developed several theories about the roles that different gut bacteria play in the ways that the body breaks down and uses nutrients and vitamins, processes they suspect relate to metabolic disease. For example, microbiome transplant [poop-transplant] studies have suggested that the introduction of specific microbes can effectively drive weight loss or gain.” More
A hacker targeted people in Australia, sending a message to their iPhones and iPads that their devices were locked — unless they paid a ransom.
What to do if iPhone hacked, locked

Weenie Roast: AVICII (live video)

Kat, Wisdom Quarterly; KROQ/YouTube  UPDATED

FREE "Weenie Roast" Concert (videostream)

Kat, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; KROQ.radio.com (CBS, Inc.)
SEE: AVICII, Beck, Foster the People, Fall Out Boy, The Neighbourhood, Bastille, Fitz & The Tantrums, Capital Cities, Phantogram, The 1975, American Authors, Kongos, and Bleachers.
KROQ Weenie Roast Saturday, May 31, 2014: Watch the live Webcast TODAY at 1:00 pm | Set Times/venue info | Lineup 

   
SoCal: the crowd at the 22nd annual summer modern-rock L.A. radio bash (kroq.com)

Friday, May 30, 2014

The problem with plastics, fake soaps (audio)

Amber Larson, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Linda Mouton Howe (earthfiles.com, May 30, 2014); Cheryl Corley (npr.org, May 21, 2014)
Prof. Sherri Mason looks for microbeads in water sample from Lake Michigan. Legislation to phase out products containing the beads is pending in New York and Illinois (Cheryl Corley).

Erie microbeads (Carolyn Box/AP/5gyres.org)
From the shoreline at North Avenue Beach in Chicago, the blue water of Lake Michigan stretches as far as the eye can see. But beneath that pristine image, there's a barely visible threat, says Jennifer Caddick of the Alliance for the Great Lakes: [toxic plastic debris in the form of] microbeads.
 
These tiny bits of plastic, small scrubbing components used in hundreds of personal care products like skin exfoliants and soap, can slip through most water treatment systems when they wash down the drain.
 
Environmentalists say they're a part of the plastic pollution found in the ocean and, increasingly, in the Great Lakes, which contain more than 20 percent of the world's freshwater. Now Illinois and New York state lawmakers are a step closer to banning them.
 
Microbeads, says Caddick, engagement director for the Alliance, are "a bigger problem than we initially had thought."
 
Plastics That Look Like Food
Sherri Mason, an associate professor of chemistry at the State University of New York, Fredonia, sailed with a research team over the past couple of years to collect data on the prevalence of plastics in the lakes. They dragged a fine mesh net in the waters at half-hour intervals to snag what they could -- "anything that's bigger than a third of a millimeter," Mason says.
 
When the boat docked at Chicago's Navy Pier last summer, Mason showed off the sample bottles of microbeads that she and her team had collected in Lake Michigan.
 
Mason says her testing found, on average, 17,000 bits of tiny plastic items per square kilometer in Lake Michigan. The levels were much lower in Lake Huron and Lake Superior, but Lake Erie and Lake Ontario had much higher concentrations. LISTEN
Plastic Microbead Trash from Oceans to Great Lakes Hurting Birds, Marine Life — and Humans?
Linda Moulton Howe (EarthFiles.com, May 30, 2014)
“We can show that the chemicals are adhering to the plastic. We can show that organisms eat the plastic. We can show the chemicals then desorb into the organism that affects the health of THAT organism!” - Associate Prof. of Chemistry Sherri Mason, SUNY, Fredonia
Trillions of plastic microbeads from human products such as toothpaste are filling up the Great Lakes and oceans with negative consequences for marine life and ultimately humans.

"Belle" and a word on Reparations (video)

Ashley Wellls, Pat Macpherson, Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Ta-Nehisi Coates, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now, 5/30/14); Michel Martin (Tell Me More/NPR.org)

(FMT) An illegitimate mixed race daughter of a wealthy British aristocrat, a Royal Navy Admiral... based on a true story, "Belle" follows the story of an Dido Elizebeth Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the illegitimate mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral. Raised by her aristocratic great-uncle, Lord Mansfield, and his wife, Lady Mansfield, Dido's lineage affords her certain privileges, yet the color of her skin prevents her from fully participating in the traditions of her social standing. Left to wonder if she will ever find love (because she, unlike the women of her time, can afford to marry for love due to her handsome inheritance), Dido falls for an idealistic young [religieux, a] vicar's son bent on change who, with her help, shapes Lord Mansfield's role as Lord Chief Justice to end slavery in England.
 
Written by Misan Sagay. Directed by Amma Asante. Also starring Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, Sara Gadon, Penelope Wilton, Miranda Richardson, Tom Felton, Sam Reid, Matthew Goode. © Fox Searchlight Picture. In theaters today, May 30, 2014.

The Untold History of Slavery in the United States of America (AP/msnbc.com)


The Case for Reparations
Reckoning with U.S. slavery and institutional racism 
Coates-nobug
Part 2: Coates on slavery reparations
An explosive new cover-story in the June 2014 issue of The Atlantic magazine by the famed essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates has rekindled a national discussion on reparations for American slavery and institutional racism.

Levittown, Penn. 1957 (AP/Bill Ingraham)
Coates explores how slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and federally-backed racist housing policy systematically and purposely robbed African Americans of their possessions [recapitulated in the recent Wall Street banking/mortgage housing bubble and foreclosure crisis] and prevented them from accruing inter-generational wealth.

Much of the essay focuses on predatory lending schemes that bilked potential African-American homeowners, concluding: "Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole." More
"Belle": Romance, Race, and Slavery with Jane Austen style
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido Elizabeth Belle in Belle.After the success of movies about the brutality of slavery, the film Belle brings a new perspective. Actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw talks about her role as a mixed-race 18th century heroine.

British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw was brought up on Jane Austen adaptations. "You know, the Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle was something I watched on a weekly basis with my mum at home in Oxfordshire," she tells NPR's [magnificent but exiting "Tell Me More" host] Michel Martin. AUDIO: LISTEN NOW
 
Screen_shot_2014-02-17_at_9.20.00_am
Untold History: More than quarter of US presidents involved in slavery, human trafficking

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Buddhists beat Columbus to America

Amber Larson, Xochitl, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Tricycle Buddhist Review; T. Hartmann
Buddhist "pueblos," not of Arizona, California, or New Mexico, but of Buddhist-India in the Himalayas, Tsemo Gompa (monastery) and Leh Palace, Ladakh (Skaman306/flickr.com)
We're here to enslave you, convert you, rape you and, oh, you may also get sick (AMN).
"Buddha Buzz: An Inglorious Columbus and a royal Buddhist wedding" (tricycle.com)
 
Buddha Buzz: An Inglorious Columbus
Tricycle.com
Racism? We're honoring you, "R-dskins"
In 1492, [Jewish-Spanish mercenary Christopher] Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Then he landed in the Bahamas and proceeded to enslave and massacre the local people.

Despite Columbus' well documented reign of cruelty and violence, Columbus Day is still celebrated as a federal holiday in most parts of the United States. (Kudos to such places as South Dakota, which celebrates Native American Day instead, and Santa Cruz, California, which celebrates Indigenous People's Day).

Can you believe those Football Peoples? (W)
As we know, Columbus was not the first European explorer to reach the Americas. That distinction belongs to [Icelandic Norwegian Viking] Leif Ericson.

But did you know that there's a theory -- first proposed by French sinologist M. De Guignes in 1761 -- that argues that Chinese [and Afghan missionary] Buddhist monks may have been the first travelers from the Old World to the New, reaching Mexico in A.D. 499?
Buddhist robe, Taos
Edward Payson Vining, a 19th-century railroad manager, was so captivated by the theory that he wrote a book about it [read it free]: An Inglorious Columbus; Or, Evidence that Hwui Shan and A Party of Buddhist Monks from Afghanistan Discovered America in the Fifth Century A.D.
 
At 800 pages, it might not work as that light before-bed reading you've been looking for, but just in case, it's available as a free e-book here. And for the faint-hearted among us, [ourselves] included, a summary is available here.

Nomadic Siberian teepee (hamidsardar.com)
This theory may be right or wrong, but as [modern maritime archeological discoveries show and] as Rick Fields wrote in his book How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America, if it is true, "Buddhism in North America may have had a far longer history and a far more profound effect [particularly on the Native Americans] than any but a few visionaries have dared to guess."

Giant Buddha of Bhutan (soultravelers3.com)
The U.S., besieged by economic woes as it is, might do well to look to Bhutan, a country [the Last Himalayan Buddhist Kingdom] that since 1972 has been focusing on its country's Gross National Happiness instead of its Gross Domestic Product [GDP].

There may have been a recent spike in national happiness, as Bhutan has just celebrated a royal Buddhist wedding: the king, Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck, got married this week in a Buddhist ceremony to a 21-year-old Bhutanese student, Jetsun Pema. There are some beautiful pictures of the event here.
 
European men rape Native American Children?
Thom Hartmann, "Columbus Day Celebration? Think Again" (CommonDreams.org)
Putting Natives to work as slaves in his gold mines, Columbus also sold sex slaves to his men -- some as young as 9. Columbus and his men also raided villages for sex and sport (ICTMN).
 
Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
...Cuneo further notes that he himself took a beautiful teenage Carib girl as his personal slave, a gift from Columbus himself, but that when he attempted to have sex with her, she "resisted with all her strength." So, in his own words, he "thrashed her mercilessly and raped her."

While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, a story made up by Columbus -- which is to this day still taught in some US schools -- to help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the Spanish monarchs in 1493: "It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell... Here there are so many of these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they are as good as gold."

Columbus and his men also used the Native Taino as sex slaves: It was a common reward for Columbus' men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500:

"A hundred castellanoes (Spanish coins) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand [to sell to white child molesting rapists who think nothing of enslaving human beings, or to regard them as animals, or to have sex with animals from the shame they are taught by their Eurocentric Judeo-Christian upbringings and the perversion of anything Jesus ever taught]." More

Occupy Together

And in another case of American occupation, one not quite as old but perhaps as controversial, Occupy [occupy.com] Wall Street has spread to 1,453 cities, according to Occupy Together. (More about OWS at OccupyWallSt.org).

As the 99% assert themselves all over America and the world, Zenju Earthlyn Marselean Manuel has written a beautiful post on her website, "Un-Occupy the Land," about the need to un-occupy instead. She writes:
I am feeling the need to un-occupy. To un-occupy would be to let go of possession[s], to let go of taking over, without knowing what such a mind/heart will lead us to. I am not saying to not protest -- we must. After all, it is money we all earned [that has been stolen from us by Wall Street bankers and the military-industrial complex]. But can we act differently than the money-handlers, to not take. If it were 'Un-occupy Wall Street' everyone would have to go.
And this is the over-arching question -- How can we un-occupy this land we have over-occupied? More

Free CASH money in Los Angeles

Fat stack of greenbacks (Jason Unbound/flickr.com/Creative Commons/scpr.org)
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So that's what it's all about, eh Mitts?
Isn't money the goal of American life, cash-money?

We do everything we do for the sake of it. I'm "spiritual" to be famous to make money. I meditate to get spiritual to be famous to make money. I study to meditate to be spiritual to be famous to make money. Then, if I had wads of greasy cash, I could [make jokes that go too far]. And, well, know wut im sayin, y'all get the idea.

But now who needs all that? Money is falling out of the anonymous sky! Somebody's making it rain. First it was coming down over the clear blue Bay, now it's pouring into the gray haze above Tinsel Town.

UPDATE May 29, 2014: The person behind @HiddenCash has brought her/his free cash drops from breezy San Francisco south to the sleepy pueblo of Los Angeles. (See his/her Twitter feed).
 
The person behind it, reportedly a man but maybe a woman, has been leaving FREE envelopes filled with cash and tweeting clues for where people -- anyone, even YOU -- can find them. 
S/he's also been working with media outlets to get the message out, including leaving cash in the NBC Bay Area parking lot and telling Angelenos to tune into the local CBS news to get their next clue Wednesday night.

(Hope the major TV networks and media conglomerates in the Hollywood skyline highrises aren't involved, *wink*).

Why do millennials drink so much?
The clues are easy! And next I hear Willy Wonka is going to be hiding golden tickets in bottles of Duff beer for Peter Griffin to choke on for a chance to get into the Made in America festival and Under the Influence rap concert featuring Jay Z, Cypress Hill, and Wiz Khalifa! It's better than trying to call Big Boy.

I found it by the Griffith Park fountain!
What an exciting time to be alive! Now, if I could only get back to my first plan, meditate, get spiritual, and get famous!
Cash Out doing his 2012 break out hit "Cashing Out" about livin' large in the big city while modeling an aspirational lifestyle for everyone to enact
Metallica plays live outdoors in Antarctica, becoming the first band in history to play all seven continents in under a year, with corporate-sugar-sponsors ("Freeze 'Em All"/youtube)
Goin' gangsta: The Santa Barbara County Sheriff displayed the weapons used by Elliot Rodger during his mass murder spree. New gun legislation is unlikely in Washington. But attention to mental health, maybe (Jae C. Hong/AP).