In 2003, there were more than two million Americans serving time in the nation’s prisons. Over the course of their time served, one in five of those inmates will be “turned out,” sodomized by their fellow prisoners and forced into sexual slavery.
Puff, puff, pass: Dolphins chew puffer fish to get high together
Experts have found evidence that young dolphins purposefully and carefully chew puffer fish to get high.
The behavior was captured by filmmakers during the creation of the BBC One documentary series Dolphins: Spy in the Pod, which used spy cameras hidden in fake turtles, fish and squid to film more than 900 hours of the aquatic mammals in their natural habitat.
Puffer fish release a toxin that can be deadly in larger amounts, but it can produce a narcotic effect in smaller doses.
Scientists found that dolphins apparently had learned just how much of the toxin would safely intoxicate them, and they carefully chewed the fish and then passed it among themselves.
The dolphins then entered what appeared to be a trancelike state.
“This was a case of young dolphins purposely experimenting with something we know to be intoxicating,” said Rob Pilley, a zoologist who worked as a producer for the series. “After chewing the puffer gently and passing it round, they began acting most peculiarly, hanging around with their noses at the surface as if fascinated by their own reflection.”
Pilley said the behavior was reminiscent of human attempts to seek biological highs.
“It reminded us of that craze a few years ago when people started licking toads to get a buzz, especially the way they hung there in a daze afterwards,” he said. “It was the most extraordinary thing to see.”
The REAL Rebels of the Civil War? Black women, men, and children who refused to be enslaved
The real rebels were the hundreds of thousands of black men and women who, in what was arguably the most successful slave uprising in world history, did more than simply resist slavery: they actively, militantly, violently, killed it.
Black Northerners had developed a political culture that equated respectable personal conduct with activism. For them, enlistment, even in light of white Northern racism, was the ultimate form of a rebellious activism. Black southerners who had escaped to the north sharpened black radicalism. The first wave of black enlistees, mostly free Northerners, were freedom fighters looking to deliver a mortal blow to an institution that had been a fundamental part of labor systems around the world for thousands of years.
They were quickly joined by hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands of men and women who had rebelled against their masters by running to Union lines. Nearly 150,000 of the men turned right around: wearing blue, carrying guns, arming cannons, setting their souls against the society that had so recently owned and demeaned them. They made up the bulk of the 180,000 black soldiers who fought alongside 20,000 black sailors to form one of the largest armed slave rebellions in history.
Crucially, tens of thousands of black women — most also formerly enslaved — “enlisted” as unglamorous but vital domestic laborers, and occasionally as spies. Harriet Tubman, who had been rebelling for years, became a guerrilla warfare leader, helping Union troops ransack Confederate land in South Carolina.
VIDEO: How Africans First Populated Europe
Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago.
How Argentina ‘Eliminated’ Africans From Its History And Conscience
It has been alleged that the president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, sought to wipe out blacks from the country in a policy of covert genocide through extremely repressive policies (including possibly the forced recruitment of Africans into the army and by forcing blacks to remain in neighborhoods where disease would decimate them in the absence of adequate health care).
But blacks did not really vanish from Argentina – despite attempts by the government to eliminate them (partially by encouraging large-scale immigration in the late 19th and 20th century from Europe and the Near East). Rather, they remain a hidden and forgotten part of Argentine society.
Ironically, Argentina’s most famous cultural gift to the world – the tango – came from the African influence. The first paintings of people dancing the tango are of people of African descent.
The Black Church Perpetuates the Enslaved Mindstate
If you notice, white churches don’t hero worship their pastors like black churches do.
White people go to church, not to a man who holds court in the church. See what I mean?
We go to church and God “moves” and we still leave slaves because in a majority of black churches there is not enough sharing of valuable information that translates into something tangible the way God intended it.
Kola Nut & The Igbo Culture
There was a wealthy man in Okonkwo’s Village who had three huge barns, nine wives and thirty children. His name was Nwakobie, and he had taken the second highest title man could take in the clan. It was for this man that Okonkwo worked to earn his first seed yams. He took a pot of palm wine and a cock to Nwakobie. Two elderly neighbors were sent to present a kola-nut and an alligator pepper, which were passed round for all to see, and then the kola nut and alligator pepper were returned to him. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and the eagle perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break. – Chinua Achebe
From Convict Labor to Unemployment: The Life of an Ex-Con
By 2000, 3 percent of the US population was either locked up, on probation or on parole—a rate unparalleled worldwide. This trend disproportionately affects people of color.
The practice of employers rejecting applicants or firing workers solely because they have criminal records is illegal but still widespread .
The millions of people locked out of the job market as a result of their records aren’t just sitting around. They’re churning through formal and informal part-time work, fueling a shadow economy akin to the one that often exploits undocumented workers.
A growing movement is pushing states to “ban the box,” or more closely regulate when and how employers can ask about criminal records on job applications. The movement has logged some victories: in October, Target, the nation’s second-largest retailer, announced that it would stop asking the question of prospective employees.
Black Fathers Are Better Fathers: National Center for Health Statistics
A federal survey of American parents shows that Black fathers who live with their children are just as involved as other dads — or more so. The report also revealed that among American fathers living apart from their children, Black dads were equally or more involved than other dads, according to most measures.
The report was based on a federal survey that included more than 3,900 fathers between 2006 and 2010 — a trove of data seen as the gold standard for studying fatherhood in the United States.
For instance, among fathers who lived with young children, 70% of Black dads said they bathed, diapered or dressed those kids every day, compared with 60% of White fathers and 45% of Latino fathers.
Nearly 35% of Black fathers who lived with their young children said they read to them daily, compared with 30% of White dads and 22% of Latino dads.
Worry about Black fathers has been tied to a persistent fact: Black dads are especially likely to live apart from one or more of their children — and fathers of all races tend to be less involved in the day-to-day lives of their kids when they live elsewhere.
Yet the report also revealed that among American fathers living apart from their children, Black dads were at least as involved as other dads not living with their kids, or more so, according to most measures. Among fathers living apart from older children, more than half of Black fathers said that several times a week or more, they talked to their kids about their day — a higher percentage than among white or Latino dads living separately from older children, the report showed.
Nearly half of Black fathers living apart from their young children said they played with them at least several times a week, 42% said they fed or ate with them that frequently, and 41% said they bathed, diapered or helped dress them as often — rates on par with or higher than those of other men living apart from their kids.
Earlier research has shown that after parents break up, fathers become less involved as time passes. Mothers may curb the time they allow an ex to spend with their children. Fathers sometimes struggle to stay as involved if they form another family.
However, Laura Tach and fellow researchers also found that Black fathers were more likely than White or Latino dads to stay close to their children after having more kids with a new partner. Because it isn’t as rare for Black fathers to live away from the home, their communities might have stronger expectations that fathers will stay involved outside the “package deal” of a wife and kids, explained Tach, a professor of policy analysis at Cornell University.
“Some men think when they lose a marriage, they lose the relationship with the kids,” said Marquette University sociology professor Roberta L. Coles. “For Black men that doesn’t seem to be as true.”
In many cases, the differences between Black fathers and those of other races were not statistically significant, researchers said.
knowledge of self 