The Invisible Woman

In this age of technocracy, isn't it amazing how easy it is to disappear entirely? All it takes is one small thoughtless action on the part of another. Say...having one's wallet stolen.

Thats all it took to turn my rather vigorous existence into none at all. I've got nothing to prove that I am who I am. I can't get an ID without 3 other forms of ID. So I'm reduced to the rights of a 12 year old, without a bank account, without booze, and without a credit card.

I've discovered a fatal flaw in the system. All this reliance on state and federal systems of keeping track of people can't work if one little accident takes away someone's identity. I have no way to get it back because the other forms of ID I need were stolen with my state ID.

I still can't believe how easily it is to become a nobody in today's society. Not in the ephemeral sense, but in the a very real, powerful sense. I do not exist any longer.

I guess all we have is what we leave with others.

The Great Pizza Wars of '06

I'm so happy that now a days I don't do any deconstruction except for the shake machine.

So I guess now would be a good time to tell you a little story.

I like to have a question of the day for the customers who come in during the slow hours. Its a good way to relate to them, and give them a little more than a slice of pepperoni with more cholesterol than a two pound cheese log.

For that purpose, today I asked people several questions depending on what I think they might like to answer. One was:
"Would you rather be murdered or assassinated?"
another was
"What is the best movie of all time?"
and another was
"Do you consider yourself politically liberal or conservative?"

One man, who was a self-proclaimed "hardcore liberal" bled at the heart for the poor and the disadvantaged.

He didn't have a sound idea in his whole being about politics, but he was nice enough. I chatted him up for awhile.

Later on, about 5 minutes later to be exact, he came up to the counter, and complained that there was a homeless man in the restaurant asking for money.

In my dream life I would have asked him "why didn't you give him any?" In my real life, I just said "oh, ok" and ignored his request to have the "nuisance" removed. He came up and complained again that nothing had been done. Finally I had had enough with his hypocrisy.

I said: "Sir, my decision to let him stay has legal precedent. Don't you see that this man was created by society? Isn't it right that we should have to deal with our own shit?"

He opened his mouth to protest, but saw the error in his way of thinking, and left in shame and silence.

Score one for the home team.

Is this beauty? Does it matter?

Pressure mounts for 'ban' on zero size models15.09.06
Add your view

Skinny supermodel Lily Cole faces a possible ban from the catwalk.
Pressure was mounting today for a catwalk ban on super-skinny models.
On the eve of London Fashion Week the growing trend for "size-zero" models in the fashion industry is causing grave concern.

Gallery: See more fashion pictures...
•Super-skinny models fuel zero size trend
•Olympus Fashion Week
•Italian Vogue "terror" fashion shoot
Experts say legislation is now needed to protect the health of the models and of the teenage girls and young women who are influenced by them.

They are urging London to follow the lead taken by Madrid — and likely to be adopted by Milan — of banning models below a certain size from the catwalks.

Under any ban, super-thin models such as Lily Cole would be barred. London Fashion Week, which begins next week, has so far refused to follow suit.

The new Spanish rules say models with a body mass index — a ratio of height to weight — below 18 are not allowed to appear at its shows.

A BMI of 18.5 or below is currently classed as under-weight by the World Health Organisation. A model who is 5ft 9in tall would have to weigh a minimum 8st 12lb to model.

The average catwalk model, according to estimates, is 5ft 9in tall but weighs just 7st 12lb, giving a BMI of only 16.

Last month South American model Luisel Ramos died moments after stepping off the catwalk from heart failure.

The 22-year-old had been told by a model agency she could "make it big" if she lost a significant amount of weight, and for three months she ate nothing but green leaves and drank only Diet Coke.

By the time she traipsed down the catwalk at the Radisson Victoria Plaza in Montevideo, Uruguay, she had stopped eating entirely.

She was cheered and applauded by the fashionistas but collapsed two minutes after she stepped down from the catwalk.

The size-zero epidemic, which started a couple of years ago in Los Angeles, is sweeping across America and redefining the body image 16-to 25-year-olds aspire to.

Size-zero girls weigh not much more than 100lb. Their diet typically consists of an apple for breakfast, a protein bar for lunch and a salad for supper.

Hyper-thin Hollywood stars such as Nicole Richie (daughter of singer Lionel Richie), Lindsay Lohan and Kate Bosworth are followers of the trend.

Steve Bloomfield, spokesman for the Eating Disorders Association, said today: "We do think legislation is needed.

"This is about protecting the young women and men who work in the fashion industry, as well as those who are at risk of an eating disorder and can be influenced by the pictures that they see.
"The fashion industry is there to make money and there is no legislation to protect models. It basically exploits people who are under-weight and forces others to follow suit."

Dr Dee Dawson, who runs the Rhodes Farm eating disorders clinic in north London, called for a new law.

"The fashion industry has completely warped what is considered a normal size and it should be held accountable for that," she said.

"They have had years to get their house in order and they have done absolutely nothing — in fact if anything it has got worse."

If the ban were implemented in London, top models such as Cole, Erin O'Connor, Irina Lazareanu, Vlada, Tanya D and Behati Prinsloo would probably be barred.
The six models are due to fly in this weekend as part of the Marks & Spencer Model Bursary — an initiative set up to bring top models to the capital's shows.

Standing at just under six foot (5ft 11.5in on her model card), O'Connor, the star of M&S's latest high-profile television advert, is unlikely to weigh in at anything near the nine and a half stone needed to give her a BMI of 18 or above — and the same would certainly be true of 17-year-old Cole, who is 5ft 10.5 in tall.

It is suggested some of the most famous models in the world would be banned under a BMI cut-off of 18.

Giselle Bundchen is reported to have a BMI of 16, Kate Moss, according to insiders, has a BMI of about 15 and Eva Herzigova has a BMI of 18.

Last week Madrid City Council, which sponsors the Spanish capital's fashion week, announced a ban on models with a BMI below 18.

Milan's mayor Letizia Moratti warned she would seek a similar ban on "sick-looking models".
However, after discussions with fashion designers, London is refusing to follow Madrid in introducing a ban.

Hilary Riva, chief executive of the British Fashion Council, said today: "We have canvassed the opinions of London Fashion Week designers for the girls they would most like to see on their catwalks and the girls are being selected for the model bursary accordingly.

"The BFC does not comment or interfere in the aesthetic of any designer's show."
Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm, the London agency that employs Cole, hit back at the calls for a ban.

She said: "It is useless to talk about body mass indexes. Who knows what that means apart from your doctor?

"It depends on different body types. Some people have different muscle density.
She added: "I believe that girls should just eat healthily, exercise and just be normal. We just wouldn't use someone who was really under-weight or too thin."

JK Rowling has launched an attack on the "skinny obsessed world" on her website.
She said she did not want her two daughters to grow up to be "empty headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones".

If Liberals were a...

If liberals were a color it would be yellow (cowards)
If liberals were a dog they would be poodles (prissy sissies)
If liberals were a food they would be French snails (eeeewww)
If liberals were a wine they would be Cook's Champagne (cheap and common)
If liberals were a beer they would be wildly over-priced microbrew snob beer (yet with no taste)
If liberals were a musical, it would be Rent
If liberals were a scent, they would be the scent of sweet failure
If liberals were a show, it would be Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (telling others what to do)
If liberals were an article of clothing, it would be women's underwear
If liberals were a shoe, it would be a birkenstock
If liberals were a car, they would be hybrids
If liberals were a work of art, they would be cans of poo and Jesus in urine
If liberals were a coffee, they would be a double espresso, no-sugar vanilla, soy milk latte
If liberals were a book, they'd be Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
If liberals were a street, they'd be a dead end
If liberals were a pasta, it would be linguini (spine)
If liberals were a family member, they would be nanny
If liberals were a fruit, they'd be bananas
If liberals were a cereal, they'd be flakes
If liberals were a holiday they'd be labor day
If liberals were a fairy tale they'd be the seven dwarves
If liberals were a slogan, they'd be "all for one, one for all, and a little bit more for me"

The Theory and Practice of Citizenship from the local to the global

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsatheme/citizenship/about/index.html

PURPOSE
Terrence J. McDonald, Dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts has designated the 2006-2007 academic year as an LSA theme year on “The Theory and Practice of Citizenship: From the Local to the Global.” This is to acknowledge and focus attention on a general reawakening of intellectual interest in issues of citizenship across academic disciplines and on a growing sense that the conditions for effective citizenship are undergoing rapid change in the new century.

Conceptions of citizenship – conventionally understood as the rights and responsibilities held by members of a political community – have been dramatically altered in recent decades. Developments in communications and information technology, the unsettlement of mass migrations, the revived politics of religion, race and ethno-nationalism, the claims of human rights, the puzzles of planetary sustainability, and the widening gaps of access to the means of survival have amended the inherited categories of citizenship bound by nationhood and radically reconfigured the boundaries of public spheres in the localities, the nations, and the world of the 21st Century.

The LSA theme year on citizenship aims to examine the role of the public university – and this university in particular – as both a citizen and a space of citizenship. The university is a protected sphere of universal values and open inquiry, in which the possibilities and risks of citizenship and of civic engagement can be studied and debated in non-partisan but engaged ways. New knowledge, competencies and literacies – historical and political awareness, scientific understanding, intercultural engagement, and skills for the critical evaluation of information – are all cultivated in this space, enabling and informing scholarly investigation as well as new strategies for public engagement. The faculty, staff, and students of the LSA share an obligation, as a community of citizens and as stewards of a site of citizenship, to address the challenges posed in the new century and to try and specify the conditions for effective engagement in public life on the local, regional, national, and global level.

In sponsoring a year of citizenship at the University of Michigan, the LSA also intends to highlight its long-standing commitment to community collaborations and service learning, as well as the broad involvement of its graduates in public service, civic life, and the practices of good citizenship. This celebration aims to acknowledge that current LSA students encounter and must engage the issues of citizenship outside the classroom – in social groups and campus organizations, as residents of the community, and as agents of social and political change – and that in grappling with these broader opportunities and obligations they require not only intellectual discussion but also frameworks and models for the effective practice of good citizenship.

In other words, why illegal aliens ought to be citizens. I love of U of M and their ever so subtle manipulation of the students. I'm for learning about citizenship, but it seems to me that the idea of being a "global citizen" is slightly....comment dit on....well it resembles the thoughts of one who likes to smell their own gasses.

This is really too bad

New leader named for NCID
By Laurel Thomas Gnagey
http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0607/Sept11_06/05.shtml

The founding director of the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) looks forward to building on the center's first year of what he calls "an impressive launch" into programs that address the scholarship of diversity.

Phillip Bowman says his vision will be to continue to develop the NCID as a national think-tank on such issues, while also engaging researchers and other key stakeholders in a social change agenda.
(Photo by Scott Galvin,
U-M Photo Services)

"My efforts will be focused toward bridging innovative scholarship with a set of engaged research, education and service activities to promote social change, says Bowman, who comes to U-M from the University of Illinois-Chicago, where most recently he served as director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, a regional center with many of the same goals as the NCID.

"The diversity challenges we face as a society are sufficiently complex that if we don't understand them better, we won't be able to solve them," he says. "At the same time, if we don't consider those challenges in our scholarship, then it becomes trivial and we won't ever solve them." Bowman says it will take multi-level engagement in diversity issues, involving internal and external partners, to work toward social change.

Bowman was named director in mid-August following a national search. His appointment is pending approval by the Board of Regents. In addition to serving as director of the center, he is a professor in the Center for Study in Higher and Postsecondary Education.

"Phil Bowman brings to this important position an excellent track record of scholarship and engagement in diversity issues," says Teresa Sullivan, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. "In particular, his work in the Chicago area establishing the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy is going to be most valuable as our center moves forward."

NCID, the brainchild of Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic affairs, was established in May 2005 with a national conference that set a course for the center. A number of programs to address diversity from various perspectives followed, all while the search for a permanent director was underway.

"Dr. Bowman's vision for the center is broad and well-considered. Both the search committee, headed by Barry Checkoway, professor of social work and urban planning, and I are convinced that he has the experience and skill to mobilize Michigan's vast resources to better engage both the challenges and opportunities of growing diversity in the 21st century," Monts says.

Bowman is no stranger to U-M. He received his doctorate in social psychology from the University and began his professional career at the Institute for Social Research (ISR). He also served as an assistant professor in psychology and Afroamerican and African Studies.

While at U-M, he directed an innovative postdoctoral training program in survey research methodology, helped direct a series of landmark national studies at ISR, and has continued to teach a course on Methodological Issues in Quantitative Research on Race and Ethnicity for the ICPSR Summer Program, says Patricia Gurin, acting director of NCID and the Nancy Cantor Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Psychology and Women's Studies, who worked with Bowman during his tenure at U-M.

"Phil Bowman is an outstanding scholar with extraordinarily broad intellectual interests that make him a natural to head up the National Center for Institutional Diversity," Gurin says. "He will connect with faculty, students, and staff across our varied academic disciplines as well as with a range of community members outside of the academy."

ISR Director James S. Jackson agrees his former student is the right choice to lead the center.

"I can't think of another person whose body of research, leadership skills and level of experience would make a better candidate than Phil Bowman," Jackson says. "The breadth of his scholarship in political science, sociology, psychology and social work, and his experience using the research to increase understanding and create change, come together in a multidimensional way that will serve the NCID well."

After leaving U-M, Bowman went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he conducted both theory-driven and policy-relevant research, and provided research training and mentoring for undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral scholars. He then served at Northwestern University, assuming several leadership roles including faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, faculty affiliate at the Joint Center for Poverty Research, coordinator of the Spencer Training Grant in Education and Social Policy, coordinator of the Graduate Program in Counseling Psychology, director of the Summer Academic Workshop, director of the Social and Behavioral Science Scholars Program and interim chair of the Department of African American Studies.

In addition to his doctorate in social psychology, Bowman also earned an Ed. S. degree in counseling psychology and student affairs in higher education from U-M, and he holds a bachelor's degree in psychology and industrial technology from Northern Arizona University.

Bowman's scholarship focuses on diversity issues in research methodology, higher education and public policy; social psychological issues in racial/ethnic disparities, and African American Studies. He is an active national and international lecturer and consultant on diversity issues in research methodology, higher education and public policy.

He has been a Rockefeller and Senior Ford Postdoctoral Fellow and his research has been supported by several sources, such as the Spencer Foundation, state agencies, and a number of federal agencies, including the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Aging and the National Science Foundation.

I can't help but feel that this man's considerable accomplishments and achievements would be better served if he worked in a capacity other than as a token "diversity specialist." Why must a black man be the head of "diversity" programs? Isn't it just slightly degrading and possibly abusive to pigeonhole someone into a certain role because of the color of their skin? Of course he chose his own course of study, but what makes people of color believe that they can't get along in academia unless they profess race and ethnicity studies? I can't tell you how many women in the humanities (especially English) feel the need to specialize in Women's Studies as well. Why? Because P.C. Universities want to show how compassionate they are by creating these "non-program programs." If you need verification of this, look at some job postings online.

Wanted: Professor of Old English and Medieval poetry and the history of the English language. Women's Studies preferred. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

In truth, all you need to teach handicapped studies is to be handicapped. All you need to teach Women's studies is to be a woman. And all you need to teach Race and Ethnicity classes is to be anything other than a white man.

And the logical implication is...

Older stem cells don’t just wear out, they actively shut themselves down

Credits: U-M Center for Stem Cell Biology, Molofsky (click image for captions and enlargements)
http://www.umich.edu/news/index.html?Releases/2006/Sep06/r090606

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The natural consequences of growing old include slower wound-healing and a brain that makes fewer new neurons because old tissues have less regenerative capacity. What has not been clear is why. A trio of papers published on-line Sept. 6 in the journal Nature shows that old stem cells don’t simply wear out, they actively shut themselves down, probably as a defense against becoming cancerous from genetic defects that accumulate with age.

"The good news is that we can get older before we get cancer," said Sean Morrison, director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Michigan, and lead author on one of the three papers. "The bad news is that our tissues can’t repair themselves as well."

Though science has long known about the reduced regenerative capacity in aging tissues, the actual mechanisms are only now coming to light. What Morrison and his colleagues at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina have found is that a gene called Ink4a actively interferes with the ability of stem cells to divide in several different types of tissue, including the brain, the pancreas, and the blood-forming system of the bone marrow.

Under optimal circumstances, stem cells are able to copy themselves and differentiate into other cells, thus replenishing their numbers and acting as a repair system for the body. The Ink4a gene appears to be widely active in locations where stem cells regenerate new tissues.

"The findings are remarkably consistent across the three papers," said Norman Sharpless, an assistant professor of medicine and genetics at the UNC, who studied the gene’s effect on insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas. "Clearly there are tissues where this gene doesn’t play a role, but probably the effect is going to be much broader than in the few tissues we’ve identified."

Morrison’s team has also shown that eliminating Ink4a partially restores the renewal of neural stem cells in some parts of the brain. "This is the first time that anyone has demonstrated it is possible to delete a single gene and rescue declines in either neurogenesis or stem cell function with age," Morrison said.

Though mice with Ink4a deleted had more regenerative capacity in tissues like the brain and the pancreas as they aged, they started dying of a wide variety of cancers at one year of age. So it can’t really be said that losing the gene helped them live longer.

"If you had a drug that could inhibit Ink4a function, you’d potentially have a therapy against degenerative diseases," Morrison said. "But you’d have to watch patients carefully for cancers. By the same token, drugs that mimic Ink4a function could be used to fight cancer." Ink4a was known to be a tumor suppressor gene that becomes more highly expressed with age, eventually triggering the cell to shut down replication. Sharpless was investigating cancer genes when he developed a mouse without Ink4a six years ago, while working at Harvard, but he also became intrigued by its 10- to 100-fold increase in expression with age.

An important natural regulator of Ink4a is a gene called Bmi-1 that promotes stem cell maintenance and cell regeneration, but can also spur cancerous growth. Stem cells balance their levels of Bmi-1 and Ink4a to maintain themselves throughout adult life.

Morrison said these are both pieces of a finely calibrated system that allows needed cell replication to occur, but can shut it down when things get out of control. His team would like to find out more about the multiple factors that change Ink4a expression with age. He notes also that Ink4a doesn’t affect all of the cells of the nervous system in mice, just a subset of them.
The parallel papers grew out of a discussion between Morrison and colleagues at a conference. When they realized they were all working on the same idea, they decided to submit their papers to Nature together. David Scadden’s team at Harvard University explored the role of Ink4a in blood-forming stem cells.

Morrison’s work was supported by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, both parts of the National Institutes of Health, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Morrison’s research team included graduate students Anna Molofsky and Nancy Joseph, and research fellow Guy Slutsky.


So basically what we're getting here is a left-handed reason to carry out embryonic stem-cell research on dead children. Justification for killing the pre-born. I know that this study was meant to show that the genes that shut down stem cells may also protect us from cancer, but what they're doing is showing that adult stem cells are useless for research because they are "shut down." Load up the trucks with baby carcasses and lets make grandma a little less senile one worthless child's life at a time.