Did you know the UV telescope invention by a young Black scientist was used on the Apollo 16 mission?
Month: January 2014
India Enslaves the Most People in the World
The World Bank estimated in 2012 that 32.7% of Indians lived below the international poverty line of less than US$1.25/day (PPP). Poverty and India’s caste system are significant contributing factors to its modern slavery problem. Indians most vulnerable to modern slavery are those from the ‘lower’ castes (dalits), and the indigenous communities (adivasis), especially women and children. In surveys of violence and discrimination against women, India is consistently ranked poorly. The low status of women and severity and prevalence of domestic violence in society puts them at risk of modern slavery.
5 Reasons Young Black Men Resort To Violence
The latest figures from the FBI, Bureau of Justice Statistics and public health agencies show that among black youth, rates of robbery and serious property offenses are the lowest in more than 40 years. Rates of murder and rape are now lower than when nationwide crime statistics first appeared in 1965—and those were far less thorough than today’s.
Assault rates are lower than when this crime statistic was expanded to include domestic violence and new offenses a quarter-century ago.
Violent and other criminal victimization of young African-Americans have also plummeted to record lows, as have a host of other ills including unplanned pregnancy, drug abuse and school dropout rates. Murder and violent crimes remain very rare events among African-Americans, less than two-tenths of 1 percent. Since the early 1990s, homicide deaths and arrests have plunged by 70 percent among black youth in America.
Despite the sharp decrease in crime in America, and other industrialized countries, the mainstream media continues to propagate an image that black males are a growing threat to the safety of the general public.
While the numbers do show that Blacks are over-represented in acts of murder and violent crime in the U.S. and other countries, Dr. Amos Wilson says the reasons they resort to violence and crime is due to their relationship with a system that has excluded and oppressed them for centuries. Personal responsibility is a factor, but understanding how the minds of young black boys have been negatively impacted by racial oppression may provide insight on what solutions will be effective in remedying the problem.
source: politico.com
King Tut’s Mummified Erect Penis May Point to Ancient Religious Struggle
The mummified erect penis and other burial anomalies were not accidents during embalming, Ikram suggests, but rather deliberate attempts to make the king appear as Osiris, the god of the underworld, in as literal a way as possible. The erect penis evokes Osiris’ regenerative powers; the black liquid made Tutankhamun’s skin color resemble that of Osiris; and the lost heart recalled the story of the god being cut to pieces by his brother Seth and his heart buried.
A head statue of Tutankhamun made of wood covered with plaster and then painted. The statue was found by Howard Carter in the pharaoh’s tomb.
SCIENTISTS AND SPECIAL-EFFECTS artists in Britain and New Zealand used digital techniques applied in crime investigations to fashion a fiberglass model they say provides the closest possible likeness of the pharaoh’s looks.
The cast of Tutankhamen’s head, which went on display for four weeks at London’s Science Museum on Monday, bears little resemblance to his golden death mask.
Unlike the famous face of the slight, heavy-lipped youth framed in a pharaoh’s headdress, the model shows a wide-faced young man with high cheekbones, smaller eyes and a heavy brow.
“I think people will be surprised it’s quite a different looking face. But it’s quite realistic given the technology used,” said a Science Museum spokeswoman.
X-RAY IMAGES USED
The reconstruction team was forced to use X-rays taken in 1968 for its impression of the 18-year-old’s looks because the mummified head of Tutankhamen was too dried and sunken to give lifelike dimensions, she said.
Robin Richards, a facial rebuilding expert from University College London, scanned the features of people of the same age, sex, build and ethnic group as Tutankhamen to create an approximation of skin type, which was wrapped onto the 3-D digital skull.
New Zealand special effects artists fleshed out the skull with eye color and skin pigment, and sculptors then created the finished product out of clay, casting it finally in fiberglass.
The tomb of King Tutankhamen, a boy king who ruled Egypt in the 14th century B.C. and died mysteriously at a young age, was discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922.
The Solution for Today’s Man: Initiation into Manhood
Sociologist Michael Kimmel suggest that many men between 16-26 are trapped in what he calls “guyland.” It is a holding ground where young men can remain boys and never really grow up and when they need to, they can act like grown men.
This problem affects all men, no matter their race, religious point of view, or socio-economic status.
If men actually followed their heart (their own inner wisdom) and were taught how to be more conscious, there would be less violence, greed, corruption and bloodshed among one another. How do men get in touch with their deeper nature and truth?
But how does a man get more in touch with himself and his own wisdom?
Three main ways:
- Initiation into manhood
- Mentorship
- A Men’s Circle
Initiation
Enter Joseph Campbell, a mythologist who did a renowned series of interviews with Bill Moyers on The Power of Myth. Campbell outlines what he calls “The hero’s journey.” George Lucas drew from this model when he made the Star Wars epic. The Lion King and the Matrix series were also modeled from the hero’s journey. I run my wilderness trips and trainings based upon this classic model.
The hero’s journey has three basic stages: severance, initiation, and the return. Campbell asserts that in order to successfully move on to the next developmental stage in our life, we have to go through a rite of passage. Campbell also purports that the all hero’s journeys have one thing in common—the ordeal.
The ordeal is something challenging we must face and on the other side is the reward that we must bring back to our community. For thousands of years, tribal and indigenous cultures initiate young boys into manhood through formal rites and rituals.
The entire intiation process leads a man toward deeper and deeper self-knowledge, the key to fulfillment and realizing one’s potential in life.
Let’s look at the popular film The Matrix. In the Matrix, the main character Neo (Keanu Reeves) was just a computer geek who worked for a lame firm and hated his job. Without “the call” toward something else, he would have been like many men—shut down, unhappy, bitter about life and stuck on the hamster wheel at a job he hates, growing increasingly bitter and resentful toward others and life in general.
The Shamanic View of Mental Illness
In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.
What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm. “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field,” says Dr. Somé. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.
One of the things Dr. Somé encountered when he first came to the United States in 1980 for graduate study was how this country deals with mental illness. When a fellow student was sent to a mental institute due to “nervous depression,” Dr. Somé went to visit him.
“I was so shocked. That was the first time I was brought face to face with what is done here to people exhibiting the same symptoms I’ve seen in my village.” What struck Dr. Somé was that the attention given to such symptoms was based on pathology, on the idea that the condition is something that needs to stop. This was in complete opposition to the way his culture views such a situation. As he looked around the stark ward at the patients, some in straitjackets, some zoned out on medications, others screaming, he observed to himself, “So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture. What a loss! What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted.”
VIDEO: Just How Insignificant Are We in this Universe? Prepare to Get Your Mind Blown
OK, obviously the universe is big. But understanding quite what that means takes a few more brain particles than I have.
Actress Defends “Submissive Role” with NHL Hubbie
Former Full House Star Candace Cameron Bure writes “I love that my man is a leader. I want him to lead and be the head of our family.”
“Those major decisions do fall on him, but it doesn’t mean I don’t voice my opinion or have an opinion, I absolutely do.”
But, ultimately, her husband gets the final say. “It is very difficult to have two heads of authority,” Bure explained. “It doesn’t work in military, it doesn’t work — I mean, you have one president, you know what I’m saying?”
She further explained: “We are equal in our . . . importance, but we are just different in our performances within our marriage.”
1 out of 3 young Iranian men “gay”?
29% of sexually active unmarried men in Iran are engaging in activities with other men, according to Are HIV Epidemics among Men Who Have Sex with Men Emerging in the Middle East and North Africa?: A Systematic Review and Data Synthesis.
Male-to-male sexual contact has to be rife in societies where heterosexual sex outside of marriage is very difficult, and marriage has to be delayed to the exigencies of the modern economy.
knowledge of self 